Find Me
by sap1066
Summary: 'So how are you, Sherlock Holmes, going to demonstrate you're in love' Set after the end of the last episode in January 2017. Will be rated as Adult ( or NC17 or M or whatever, you get the idea) for the final chapter.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 _'You know where to find me'_. Sherlock Holmes considered the message glowing from the screen of his phone. It didn't seem quite right somehow, too provocative? Too arrogant? He dismissed that thought with a wave, it was only the literal truth, after all, but still. He deleted the message, pursed his lips and sat in silence attempting to determine the best alternative. Could he just say _'Find me'_ , or would that appear too desperate, more of a call for help? He'd already rejected the obvious ' _Dinner?_ ' because of the connotation she'd put on it, and also because it seemed a strange response to a text that had simply read ' _Happy Birthday'_.

There had been no gift this year. Last year he'd received a hand delivered parcel containing a puzzle box which had defeated his best attempts to open it. It was still on the shelf with its rattling secret locked inside and he wasn't yet willing to admit defeat and smash it to pieces. The year before a piece of woven reed in the shape of a heart had been left on his doorstep, and he'd understood by the knotwork that she was in one of the southern fishing villages of Indonesia. She'd said he wouldn't be able to find her, and he hadn't tried, but every time a token arrived he knew she was still safe.

He drummed his fingers on his knee in frustration. This was John's idea. It wasn't even a very good idea, born of grief at the loss of his wife and a projection of John's own feelings onto a man who wasn't capable of them.

But he couldn't very well say no. He owed John basically, well, everything, and it was going to take a lifetime to work off the debt. Besides, wherever Sherlock's private life was concerned John was as persistent as a dog with another dog's backside, forever sniffing around. He was going to have to send her some kind of message. Maybe she wouldn't respond.

He hammered out his original wording ' _You know where to find me_ ,' then hesitated, added his initials in case she'd transferred phones and lost his number and pressed send. He put the phone back in his pocket and then took it out again, just checking that the ring tone and text alert volume were up as high as they could go. He put the phone away again.

Took it back out to check the message had actually been sent and was now showing as delivered.

Put the phone away.

Took it back out to check there was plenty of battery life.

Put it away.

Nearly jumped out of his chair when his pocket buzzed with a reply – so soon she must have been waiting for his call. His hand shook slightly as he took out the mobile with a sick feeling that was both trepidation and excitement.

It was a message from John that read ' _When you're quite ready_.'

He looked up. John waved from the seat directly opposite, gestured towards the consulting chair in which sat their next client, a man Sherlock couldn't remember ever seeing before in his life. His eyes slid to the clock – apparently two hours had passed since he remembered John asking him to stop playing with his mobile because the next case was walking up the stairs.

'Carry on Mr Cubitt,' John said, politely but with a sharp glare in Sherlock's direction. 'I think he's stopped working on that national emergency I was telling you about.'

Sherlock felt some kind of apology was called for and he sprang to his feet, suddenly full of a bubbling rush of energy. 'Mr Cubitt,'

'Mr Holmes, I…'

But Sherlock wasn't finished, hadn't actually even started. 'Mr Cubitt. Congratulations on your marriage, I hope you and your wife will be very happy, although you might want to get that ring adjusted before it makes your finger any more infected. Life is good, isn't it, Mr Cubitt, better than it was? You have the broken capillaries and bent nose of a man who liked a drink in his youth and the tattoo you've had lasered off your neck was probably not well considered, but given that you're wearing a handmade suit and an expensive make of boots I think the drinking never got out of hand and it was professional in nature, so you were probably a barman or a publican in your youth. Your face is tanned but it's natural, indicating you spend a good proportion of every day outside and the fact that there's mud on those flashy boots tells me you've had to walk quite a long way to get to your car so I'd say you live in a large house with several acres of land in the country. Judging by your accent and the fact that you can't stop playing with a Landrover branded keyring that still has the registration number written on it and putting that together with your background in the hospitality industry I'd say you own an extensive and prosperous guest house somewhere in Norfolk.'

He took a breath, looked around for compliments.

'Ah – Sherlock?' John's face betrayed limited patience. 'He's told us all that already. I didn't think you were listening.'

'It's a boutique hotel,' Mr Cubitt corrected. 'Look, if you're too busy I can ask someone else.'

Sherlock dropped into his chair, waved a hand, 'Carry on, carry on.'

'My wife, Elsie, she noticed it first…'

Sherlock tapped his pocket surreptitiously, checking the phone was still in place, and let the flood of words wash into one ear, and pour straight out of the other.

 _'When I say run – run._ '


	2. Chapter 2

_Karachi_

 _He gazed deep into her eyes (noting the eyelash tint shade No 3 'Smoky Black' faded by approximately three weeks and the smudge of liner clinging to the lower left lid, indicative of a hasty application in the dark no more than twenty-four hours ago). Her pupils dilated._

 _'When I say run, run,' he whispered, covered by the crunch of the third guard's footsteps across the gravel._

 _Second hand boots, laces frayed and pulled through repunched holes but tied tight enough to cut off circulation, trousers too long with an unwashed bloodstain on the left hand pocket, and an automatic weapon, oiled, loaded and fully operational. A new recruit then, low status within the group hierarchy but fervent, proud of small victories and keen to impress._

 _He turned, raising the sword threateningly above his head, and bellowed 'What is the meaning of this?' in deliberately broken Urdu heavily inflected with a Muscovite accent. It had been a difficult linguistic challenge and one that had taken several days to master but he was relatively pleased with the outcome, although next time he'd put more stress on the second syllable._

 _He swung the sword in a swift arc, coming to rest with the tip against guard three's nascent beard, watching him take a step back in response, a step further away from the woman still kneeling in the dirt. 'Who is in charge?' That was better, much more fluent._

 _He wheeled away from the boy, brandishing the weapon threateningly and headed towards the man he already knew was the head of the outfit, who was just exiting the armoured jeep. It wasn't even his jeep, it was borrowed, the seat set too close to the steering column for the portly man struggling to clamber out, clearly too scared of the actual owner to move the seat back._

 _This was the worst band of terrorists Sherlock had ever come across, bar none. He swore, using a current colloquial Russian term he was almost certain Mycroft wouldn't yet have heard of, and strolled over to the leader, projecting anger and barely controlled violence. 'Incompetent dog. You're a disgrace to the cause.' He gesticulated with the sword again. 'What do you mean by this? You're being paid to deliver her unharmed, not chop her head off.'_

 _The other man frowned at him. Overweight, which was difficult to achieve in a desert, with a carefully groomed beard and nicotine stained fingers, this man had joined the cell most probably though family connections more devout that his own inclination, since he'd clearly spent much of his life watching football in a bar. Sherlock couldn't exactly determine which team he'd supported, but he'd narrowed it down to three._

 _'Waditun?' The man struggled over the unfamiliar code word._

 _It was an anagram of the Russian name of Vladimir Putin's last dog, translated into Urdu, which Sherlock thought his brother might have fun deciphering. 'Waditun.' He lowered the sword but frowned enough to indicate he wasn't mollified. 'Why did you call for an executioner – she's not to be harmed until I had her over to the buyer - or did you get so drunk you forgot that part?'_

 _The other man shifted uncomfortably, then shouted in an overly loud voice. 'She is an infidel. She is a whore. She must die.'_

 _There was a weak cheer from the rest of the group._

 _Sherlock didn't have a lot of patience for mock believers. Or actual believers, for that matter. 'She is certainly a whore. And she will die. Did she try to seduce your boy over there last night?' He waggled his sword in the direction of guard number three, who raised his head, eyes shining with righteous passion._

 _'She did. She held my hand. She asked me if I'd ever…' he shuddered. 'With anyone.'_

 _Sherlock shot her a withering glance. 'I quite understand.'_

 _'Your accent is appalling,' she commented, in English. 'I'm surprised they can understand a word you're saying.'_

 _'Shut up, treacherous bitch,' yelled guard three, kicking her in the side with his shiny boots._

 _Sherlock dropped the sword and the gun was in his hand faster than blinking. 'You hurt her, you die,' he yelled._

 _Irene's lips were taut with pain but she still managed to raise an eyebrow at him._

 _He recovered quickly. 'I must deliver her alive. No one kills her but Yuri.'_

 _There was a tense standoff, until the leader put his hand on the third guard's AK47 and pushed the muzzle down, 'She will die?'_

 _Sherlock rolled a shoulder. 'Of course. But they want to hear her scream first.' He turned so that he could no longer see her expression._

 _'Then honour is restored. Let us discuss payment.'_

 _Sherlock retrieved the suitcase he'd dropped by the jeep when he'd collected the executioner's sword. It was battered and old, entirely authentic and preloaded with some interesting DNA traces that would lead straight back to the Kremlin. It was also stuffed with US dollars, filtered through a range of already monitored accounts that could be linked to the same place. The only reason he was still wearing the ridiculous black disguise was so that he didn't contaminate the evidence he was leaving with any trace of himself. He popped the catches, displayed the money for counting, and, as expected, the rest of the least professional terror group in the world wandered over, drawn by the magnetic pull of capitalism._

 _He glanced towards Irene and he didn't even need to say 'run' because she was already on her feet. Listening, he understood she'd been an athlete at some point, hurdles most likely, because her acceleration was good, but it was a while since she'd done any strenuous exercise and she was going to need new shoes._

 _The leader of the cell picked up a bundle of notes, flicked through them with a finger, his back to the fleeing captive._

 _Alerted by the flap of departing flip flops guard three raised his eyes, and then his gun almost immediately afterwards. 'Whore!' he yelled. 'She's getting away.'_

 _In one smooth, newly perfected motion, Sherlock drew his pistol and shot her in the chest._


	3. Chapter 3

At length, Sherlock realised they were both waiting for an answer so he tried to focus on the last thing he could remember hearing. 'TripAdvisor? What's TripAdvisor?'

'He doesn't get out much,' explained John to their client, whom Sherlock had no recollection of ever seeing before. A large man, late forties, with the broken capillaries and bent nose… Ah. His memory caught up with what his mouth had been saying not ten minutes before.

'Just show him the code.'

Mr Cubitt was waving a smartphone at him, open to the page of some website on which was displayed a series of stick men waving various flags.

Sherlock took the phone, caressed the screen almost in awe as his mind checked through its databanks of ciphers and encryptions, already knowing that this was something entirely new.

John peered over his shoulder and tried to be helpful. 'TripAdvisor is a site where people leave reviews of the places they've been. Someone left a strange review about Mr Cubitt's hotel. It's semaphore isn't it? All those men with flags.'

Sherlock shook his head impatiently, 'It's not semaphore.'

'Morse Code then? Everything's always Morse Code. Every time someone gets stuck in a cellar or drifts out to sea they signal for help using Morse Code. They never remember to take a phone with them, but they always remember their Morse Code.'

'It's not Morse Code.'

'Then what is it? What does it say?'

Both John and Mr Cubitt were gazing at him with expectant faces.

'Have you had any more of these messages?' Sherlock asked, disguising the fact that he didn't currently have an answer.

'Yes, there was one sent by email to the address we use for bookings – it's here, I'll show you.'

The hotelier took his phone back and thumbed the screen for a few seconds, presenting Sherlock with a message he memorised on the spot. John dug around on the bookshelves for a minute and unearthed a blackboard, on which he slowly and laboriously chalked the figures, leaving a dash below in which to add the letters.

'Nor is it hangman,' Sherlock remarked, seeing the direction of his friend's thoughts. He considered the board for a minute then bent forward, fixing his client with his best piercing stare. 'And what about the one on the garage this morning?'

Cubitt started. 'How did you know?'

'You have a new car, its expensive and you've got the money so it must be parked in a garage. A strange email and a random review on WhipAdvisor could be written off as a phishing scam or some kind of cyber-attack but when the same message appears at your home you're going to be worried. Worried enough to get into your new car and drive all the way to London. Did you bring me the third message?'

Cubitt flushed slightly. 'I washed it off. I didn't want Elsie to see it.'

'Elise is Mr Cubitt's wife,' John offered before Sherlock had a chance to ask. 'Why not?'

Cubitt shifted uncomfortably on the hard chair. 'She has…a bit of a history. And it isn't entirely all sweet and innocent – I'm not ashamed of it, it's one of the things I love about her. Keeps life interesting, you know?'

John smiled, a sad wistful smile, resumed his seat. 'I think we can both understand the attraction of a woman with a past.' Sherlock didn't fail to note the quick glance that accompanied these words.

'She was an exotic dancer when I met her. In America. When we were married she wanted a new start and we agreed we'd never mention it again. She never had any English clients and when she moved over to live with me in the UK after the wedding, she promised that no one from her past would ever bother us. In fact, she changed her name, dyed her hair, put on some weight, dropped her accent and had no contact with anyone she knew from before at all. At first, I thought it was just because she was trying to forget her old life, but lately I've wondered if it isn't more than that.'

'Her behaviour is unusual?'

'She had a burglar alarm fitted throughout the hotel linked to the police station and she insisted that I install a panic room to go with it. She vets all the clients, checks them out before they arrive and says we're fully booked if she doesn't like the look of them. She locks up, personally, every night, won't let me do it and whenever we go out she's always looking over her shoulder.'

Sherlock sighed, disappointed that something potentially so interesting had turned out to be so domestic. 'Go home and talk to your wife, Mr Cubitt. This isn't a problem I can help you with.'

'But the code, have you cracked it? What does it say?'

'I don't know what it says. I'm sure your wife could tell you if you asked. It sounds very much like she has a stalker, someone from her past whom she knows quite well and who has finally tracked her down. I suggest you go home and ask her yourself.' He turned to his friend. 'Why don't people in relationships just talk to each other? That's what I don't understand. Why does everyone insist on keeping secrets rather than discussing their feelings openly like rational adults?'

John cocked his head to one side. 'When have you ever discussed your feelings like a rational adult?'

'I don't have 'feelings'' he retorted, complete with imaginary inverted commas.

'No. You have 'emotional context,'' corrected John, also with commas. 'That's the same thing.'

'But what about the code?' wailed Mr Cubitt.

'Are you still here? Go home. Talk to your wife. Goodbye.'

'No, I'm not leaving until you tell me what that message says,' Cubitt snapped back, his face red and his banana fingers curling in his lap.

Sherlock waved a hand at him. 'Irrelevant. Go away. I'm not getting involved in somebody else's marriage.'

'What my friend here meant to say,' cut in John in a practised fashion. 'Is that he can't currently translate your semaphore, but if you get any more messages please let him know.'

'Really? That's what he meant to say?'

Sherlock snorted and headed to the kitchen in search of tea.

'Almost certainly. Have a good day.'

The man's receding footsteps were camouflaged by the instant whine of the kettle.

John propped himself against the doorway, smirking. 'You've sent her a text, haven't you?'


	4. Chapter 4

_Karachi_

 _She staggered to the right, a hand going automatically to the ground but she made it a few more paces before she fell face forward into the dirt. Sherlock shook his head, turned back to the matter at hand._

 _'It's all there? You're satisfied?'_

 _The not so terrifying terrorist leader grunted assent._

 _'And you know what happens next?'_

 _The man drew his attention away from the money with difficulty, an expression of unease crossing his features._

 _Sherlock sighed, drummed his fingers on the hood of the jeep. 'Let's go over it again. In two days' time, you claim to have beheaded this woman. You release a statement in the usual way, and a picture confirming death and you tell no one I was here. Understand? If you do that, you'll get another one of these.' He patted the case. And if you don't do it yourself I'll do it for you, he added silently. Withdrawing a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of the case - printed with a few short words in very simple writing - he waved it at the commander. 'Copy this, understand? Put it on the internet and tell no one I was here.'_

 _There was a nod of acknowledgement and Sherlock held out a gloved hand. 'Phone?'_

 _'What for?'_

 _He had to restrain the shouting. 'You need a picture of her.' He jerked his head. 'Or no one will believe she's dead.'_

 _Clearly preoccupied with several hundred thousand dollars the cell leader fumbled in his pocket and held out a camera phone so ancient it probably needed film, but Sherlock snatched it anyway and crossed to the sprawled figure on the ground. He flicked the fabric off her face to expose more of the grey skin, the glassy staring eyes and took a few extreme close up shots. She certainly looked dead, and looking dead was the effect he'd been trying for, having carefully selected an appropriate tranquilizer following a short period of trial and error with a very accommodating ferret. He left her lying where she'd fallen, returned to the 'terror' cell and handed back the phone to its commander._

 _'Remember, two days, and you can claim the kill. The infidel woman Irene Adler is dead and righteous brothers will line up to join your fight. I will send the money as soon as I see the announcement online. Good luck, my brothers.' He clapped the third guard on the shoulder just so he'd remember, 'Tell no one I was here.'_

 _Then he retraced his steps, picked up a stray arm and hauled Irene through the dirt to the hulking, rust splattered Russian car he'd arrived in and dumped her unceremoniously in the trunk. Then he drove away. Twenty minutes further on, once he was sure he hadn't been followed he pulled over, stripped off the black costume and donned jeans and a tough leather jacket over the paper jumpsuit he'd stolen from Molly. He transferred his captive into the passenger seat and carried on his way. Her head lolled against the window for a few minutes and he took the opportunity to confirm his hypothesis about where she'd been for the last three months. Her eyes flickered, and he returned his attention to the road, calculating distances, triangulating vectors, generating supplementary fall back plans. Working out how to shave a few more minutes off the time he'd be forced to spend with her._

 _She only woke up when he'd withdrawn the needle and was busy staunching the flow of blood with a piece of cotton wool. She murmured, tossed her head, and he dropped her arm immediately, stepping back. Blinking, she attempted to move, sit up, and a frown crinkled that perfectly smooth forehead when she realised she couldn't._

 _She turned her head, 'Hello.'_

 _Even in the dim light seeping in around the closed door he could discern that her eyes were moist. Damp. Wet, even._

 _He bent to retrieve a few more items from the bag on the floor, knowing that the most dangerous part of the plan was about to start. 'Try to get out,' he demanded._

 _'Why would I want to do that? We're alone, in a …' she faltered momentarily. 'Shipping container on a boat and you have me strapped to a bed. Why would I want to get out?'_


	5. Chapter 5

'Yes,' snapped Sherlock, still fiddling with tea bags and hot water. 'And I hope she won't reply.'

John's smirk warmed into a smile. 'Or at least, you hope she won't reply while I'm standing here watching you. I'm going to pick up Rosie now. I'll knock when I get back, shall I? Just in case you're busy.'

Sherlock grimaced into his tea. This was all John's fault. He'd been quite happy not texting, or at least reading her messages and composing responses in his head without actually sending them. Once a month or so he'd have another attempt at opening the puzzle box but mostly he preferred to keep her locked inside his memory where she stood, resplendent in her nakedness, running a finger down his cheek as she had that last time in Karachi. She was always naked. He hadn't questioned his subconscious too closely as to why.

As soon as the door shut Sherlock took out his phone again, replaced it on the kitchen side in a direct line of sight and proceeded to carry it around with him from task to task for the rest of the day. An urgent new case might come in. An interesting development might arise in an existing one. It was important that he was contactable at all times.

But the text didn't come until two o'clock the following morning, and when it did arrive it was a fish. An extreme close-up of a fish, with a bulbous, glassy eye and a bit of greyish scale visible on a green background. He abandoned the half-finished experiment on the preservative properties of natron and swapped the kitchen table for a laptop and a lesson in aquatic classification.

Eventually he concluded the fish was a common species found across much of the South China Sea but it was lying on daun pandan leaves in a pattern most commonly produced by the Terengganu Malay, which placed her on the other side of the world. There was no special message encoded in the name of the fish or spelt out in the leaves and in the end he had to conclude it was simply a picture of a fish.

He put the phone aside, watched the dawn rise over West London battling a faint sense of disappointment. By the time John arrived late the next morning with his exaggerated knocking and expectant expression Sherlock would have taken any case whatsoever just for the distraction.

'Any more on the dancing men?' he asked brightly, before John could start asking the questions so clearly on the tip of his tongue.

'Er, yes. I had a message from Mr Cubitt this morning, he's going to call us later.' He took a breath. 'Why is there a mummified ferret on the kitchen table?'

When the call came John routed it though the laptop screen to get a better view.

'Dr Watson, I've had another message,' Cubitt started without preamble. Even via the medium of Skype it was obvious how agitated he was, his face flushed and sweating and much too close to the screen. 'And this one was here -' The computer swivelled round to show an indoor swimming pool, faced with granite and dark shiny tiles and housed in a modern, steel framed extension which looked like it had already won prizes for architectural design. 'Right inside the hotel on the wall above the pool. Look.'

The screen was initially too close to show more than a solitary foot of one of the men but as Cubitt walked backwards the scale of the message became apparent. Someone had defaced an entire wall of the pool with a troupe of dancing men, several feet high and daubed in white paint. There were splatter marks on the floor below. Sherlock jotted down the message, turned away to find his record of the others and began working without further comment.

'What does it say, Mr Holmes? Dr Watson? What does it say?'

'I don't know Henry,' John replied. 'But we're working on it.'

'They've been in my house, Doctor Watson. They've been into the hotel and they didn't set off the alarm.' Henry Cubitt's voice came out in panting gulps, 'I can't keep Elsie safe if they're already inside.'

'And what did your wife say when you asked her about the messages?' John asked in his reassuring manner. 'Did she tell you who was sending them?'

'No, she just begged me not to get involved. She asked me not to go looking for whoever is doing this. She said they'd give up if she ignored them, but I don't believe her.'

'Is it a guest, do you think, Mr Cubitt? Do you have CCTV on the swimming pool? Whoever it was must have been painting on the wall for quite some time, someone might have seen them.'

'All the CCTV went down overnight,' Henry Cubitt rasped. 'I don't know why. But whoever it is that's doing this, when I find him I'm going to wring his bloody neck. He's not getting away with graffiting my hotel and terrifying my wife. When I find him, I'm going to kill him.'

'Why not wait until we've decoded the message, Henry? I'm sure it won't take long.'

Sherlock felt John's eyes on his back and he shrugged, anticipating the question.

'We'll come up to Norfolk to see you as soon as we've worked out what it says, alright? Text me the address. And in the meantime, try not to do anything rash. Talk to your wife again, see if she'll tell you anything else. We'll see you shortly.' John disconnected the call and leaned over Sherlock's shoulder. 'Well? What does it say?'

'I don't know yet. Give me a minute.'

But it took more than a minute. It took so long that Sherlock lost track of time, eventually finding himself pacing the sitting room tossing the puzzle box from hand to hand with John wearing different clothes and peering at him over the top of the newspaper.

'I might add this to my monograph,' he announced, with a mouth that tasted suddenly dry and stale. 'One hundred and sixty one keyless cyphers and other complex codes. What do you think?'

'I've been thinking of titles for the blog as well actually. How about 'The Case of the Semaphore Cipher' or 'The Mystery of the Morse Code Men'. They danced rings around Sherlock Holmes.'

'Fine. Whatever. Although I think I've already pointed out the weaknesses in both those titles. Get Mr Cubitt back on the phone and ask him to ask his wife if she knows anyone called Abe.'

John set the paper aside, checked his watch. 'I don't need to get him on the phone, we'll be seeing him in a few hours.'

'What for? I've cracked the code, he can give the local force the name. This was quite straightforward, or it was once I remembered the name of Mr Cubitt's wife. I'm sure they'll be able to follow the explanation and use the messages as proof to get a conviction.'

He turned to the backboard, already populated with several sets of dancing men, and started filling in the dashes underneath each figure with letters. 'The flags the men are holding signal the end of words, they're punctuation rather than letters. This word in the last message is the key - five letters, with the same letter at the beginning and the end. I conjectured that it was Elsie, which also gave me an L, an S and an I. If we look at the first message we can see that the first letter is also an I and then there's another word of two letters before the third word, which has two 'e's and can only be 'here'. So 'I am here'. There's a margin of error around the rest of the message but I'm sure this is a name. There can't be that many Americans called Abraham Slaney recently arrived in the country can there? I'm much too busy to go to Norfolk.'

'We're going,' said John with finality. 'Take a look at the front door.'

'I saw it yesterday.'

'You didn't. You haven't been out of the house in forty-eight hours. It took you ages to solve the flag people code – was there something else on your mind?'

'Fish. I'll go and look at the door.'

On the chipped and dented black paint of 221B a line of chalk figures now danced, spelling out a message of three words. The last word was the longest, at eight letters. He trotted back up the stairs already slinging off the dressing gown and wondering if he had time for a shower before the next train.

'Doctor Watson,' he said, rubbing his hands. 'Somewhere there's a hotel room with my name on it.'

John was buying tickets when the text alert went off but the tremendous roar of Liverpool Street Station would have drowned out the throaty cry anyway.

This time she'd sent him a picture of snow. Very close up snow with the light reflecting off it in such a way that the majority of the picture was bright white. There was an odd shaped shadow in the top right hand corner though, and a pinkish tinge to the snow beneath. It took barely seven seconds for him to recognise the shape of a rhododendron in the shadow and to connect that with the frozen patch of ground and come up with Nepal.

Then he stashed the phone back in his pocket. He didn't have time to deal with her now, the game was on.


	6. Chapter 6

_Karachi_

 _She gave him the predatory, challenging smile he'd been expecting and he speculated she might not even be able to control her responses to men, her automatic reaction to any comment always linked to some kind of sexual challenge. He pitied and despised that flaw in her nature._

 _'Don't do that. I don't have time for games. I need to be at the airport in less than three hours and I have a lot of work to do first.' He gestured. 'Struggle. Try to get out.'_

 _Her defiance dropped away and she thrashed against the blankets for a while before he judged it was enough and released the wide leather straps pinning her across the upper arms and thighs and she sat up on the bed, shaking out her hands to restore the circulation. 'Next?'_

 _He passed her a set of handcuffs without comment. She looked at them dispassionately for a moment. 'Three hours is long enough for what you want, you know.' The corner of her mouth quirked into a half smile. 'Three minutes might be long enough if you were wearing these.'_

 _He knelt at her side, snapped the metal closed and actively tried to hurt her._

 _She shook him off after a while and examined her wrists. 'These handcuffs you bought are too expensive, there aren't enough sharp edges. Try twisting as you pull.'_

 _He complied, following her instructions until her wrists were red and sore, and enough skin cells had been transferred to the handcuffs to facilitate a positive DNA match. 'Can you stand?' he asked. 'I've taken a pint of blood; you might experience some dizziness.'_

 _'I'll be fine. Although next time don't forget the tea and biscuits.' She attempted to stand, lost her balance and ended up flat on the floor, her manacled hands braced against the cold metal._

 _'Excellent improvisation, just hold still a minute.' He stuck a pin in the warm bag of blood, squeezed it out onto the floor in an artistic spatter, then heaved her upright by one elbow. Ensuring her bare feet smeared the blood he propelled her across the room as roughly as possible, remaining entirely detached and taking no pleasure in manhandling her at all. None at all. He pushed her back against the wall and she raised her arms above her head without being asked._

 _'It might be more authentic if you, say, took one of those leather straps off the bed and tied me to that hook in the wall with it. Up there, look.'_

 _He stepped back, considering, then nodded. 'Improvisation.'_

 _She shrugged. 'Experience.'_

 _The strap went through the manacles and was then looped over the hook leaving Irene on tiptoes, immobilised and vulnerable. She didn't know she was supposed to be vulnerable though, because her eyes flashed amusement and possibly even approval at him in a way that was quite unsettling. He focused on the first blow, anticipating where the blood might fall when she was hit, squeezing the bag he still held to ensure the splatter pattern would look realistic._

 _'Do you really think he's going to fall for this? A bit of blood and a fake beating. It's not that I don't appreciate being rescued, but this plan is never going to work.'_

 _He threw some blood at the wall, covering her cheek in fine droplets. 'Explain why.'_

 _'The terror cell for one thing. I was minding my own business in India.'_

 _'Running a fraudulent adult chat line,' he murmured._

 _'Minding my own business, when I was snatched off the street,'_

 _'Collected from the only manicurist in rural Kashmir that stocks your favourite brand of nail polish.'_

 _'And bundled into the back of a car with a bag on my head, driven for miles and miles and handed over to some terrorists waving swords at me. If you wanted to fake my death wouldn't it have been easier and quicker to have arranged something else? No one is going to believe I'm dead without a beheading video and you can't possibly have put a convincing film together without me. So your sainted brother and everyone else looking for me is going to know I was rescued.'_

 _'Obviously.' He stomped though the pool of blood on the floor, coming up close and then walking away as he imagined anyone inflicting torture properly would need to._

 _'And they'll know I was rescued by a Russian – you told the terrorist group to forget you often enough to make sure they'll remember. I assume you've rented this container in a suitably stereotypical name – and you're setting up this room so that anyone who comes looking for me will think I was killed here.'_

 _'Tortured here, then thrown overboard to drown,' he corrected, opening a small pouch and tweezers from his pocket and placing a number of hairs in the wet blood._

 _'You'll fly out of Karachi to Moscow so the trail leads back to Russia. But they'll see you going through the airport on the CCTV. And I'm sorry, Sherlock, but you're terrible at disguises. There's a big hole in your plan.'_

 _He took a pace forward, reached up to unhook her arms, unlocked the cuffs and discarded them on the floor. He frowned down into those calculating blue eyes, slightly disappointed._

 _'Ah, you're not going through the airport,' she replied, returning his stare for just slightly longer than he thought necessary. 'Someone else is. But who? Who could you possibly trust to impersonate a Russian assassin?'_

 _'When I say now, I want you to fall into my arms,' he commanded, aware he'd reached the most dangerous part of the plan, again._

 _She smiled, a slow, languorous smile that set his teeth on edge. 'You don't have to ask me twice.'_

 _He rolled his eyes. 'Now!'_

 _She fell gracefully towards him, and he caught her under the arms and dragged her across the floor in the direction of the door like a sack of potatoes._

 _Facedown, she carried on talking, 'Oh, clever. I see. No one's impersonating a Russian assassin. There's a real one on a flight out of Karachi in three hours. The same one whose DNA you've just planted. That's why you had to use the terror cell – because you need it to look like this Russian - who you've been trailing for months, probably - came to Pakistan to kill me and now he's going home. Your theory being that if everyone who wants to kill me thinks the Russians set up an undercover operation they'll stop looking. You're probably right. But that won't fool Mycroft, will it?'_

 _They'd reached the door but he continued to drag her over the deck, knowing that all the cameras had been disabled yesterday and wanting only to create the odd smear of blood on metal to point the way. At the nearest railing he paused, pushing her back firmly against it and reaching down to rub a piece of the black fabric she was still wearing hard enough into the bars for some to catch. She stood on the lowest rung, and wrapped her fingers around the metal, pressing down to leave a decent imprint, and then paused._

 _He shifted away from the direct scrutiny, distracting her with a tug on her garment that meant she should remove it and while she shrugged it off he answered. 'You don't understand my brother. He doesn't care about you. It doesn't matter to him if you're alive or dead – all that matters is that you're out of the way.'_

 _She threw the garment over the rail. 'Out of whose way?'_

 _'He's only interested in the cover story. He'll tell John you're dead, and then make him tell me some lie to pretend you're still alive, which he knows I'll see straight through. But he's giving me an excuse. He's almost sure I won't come after you but he's giving me a reason to stay away. It doesn't matter if the terrorists killed you, or if the Russians killed you or if you were just tortured and then disappeared. It would take time and effort to investigate the truth and he doesn't think I'm sufficiently incentivised. He thinks that if it looks enough like you're dead I won't try to find you.'_

 _She fixed him with a very direct stare, all the more off-putting because it was at eye level. 'Because of how you behaved the last time the three of us met? All that chemical defect stuff and sorry about dinner? That look in your eyes in your eyes like you hated me.'_

 _'Exactly.' He was approaching what was sure to be the most dangerous part of the plan._

 _'So you were planning to rescue me all along?'_

 _'Always.'_

 _He held out his arms._

 **Read my novel The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer available now on Amazon, Smashwords and B &N. **


	7. Chapter 7

English countryside flashed past the window in an indistinguishable blur, and then got progressively more defined as the train was delayed and they ended up standing at a signal for twenty minutes gazing out at the same leaf.

'What does the message on the door say?' said John, having clearly been struggling not to ask the obvious question for the best part of an hour.

'Miss me, Sherlock,' he replied in an ominous tone.

'I am so sick of everyone saying that. Haven't we conclusively demonstrated at least fifteen times that Jim Moriarty is a) dead and b) someone who should never have been allowed access to recording equipment. I knew when I saw the drawings on the door that something else was going on. This isn't just about the dancing men, is it?'

'It should be,' Sherlock watched the leaf waving outside the window. 'It should be a simple code, and a rather odd and frustrating scenario in which I have to save a man from having to confront his own wife. But somebody wrote on my front door and that means that not only do they know I've taken the case, but they also already know the code, or cracked it before I did.'

'You've had your mind on other things. Although I'm not entirely convinced it's just your mind.'

'I'm not distracted any more. And, if it means you'll stop talking about it every five minutes, I did send her a message but she's on the other side of the world and she's not coming back. She keeps sending me her holiday snaps. Now, do you mind being quiet while I try to think.'

'And are you thinking about the case or the fact that she didn't come running when you called her? What was the message you sent - did you tell her you haven't so much as looked in anyone else's direction since the day you met? Did you say you still keep her phone in that memento drawer you think I don't know about? Or was it some off hand text that gave her no idea how you feel?'

'I can't even hear you anymore.' Sherlock closed his eyes and didn't open them again until the train had arrived at its destination.

But on the way to the hotel the taxi was overtaken by two police cars and an ambulance.

'Doesn't look good,' remarked John as they began the turn up the long gravel drive that led to the sweeping portico and brick towers of Riding Thorpe Manor Hotel.

'It looks perfectly adequate, but I don't see what makes it 'boutique'.'

A paramedic was wheeling a large body on a stretcher towards a waiting ambulance, which roared off down the drive as soon as the patient was safely inside.

Sherlock watched it pass. 'I may have miscalculated,' he murmured.

John hailed the nearest uniform. 'What's going on mate?'

'The owner's been shot. Are you a guest?'

'Yes. Or I will be as soon as I check in.'

The policeman nodded. 'Then go and check in. You're a suspect.'

Shaking his head, Sherlock tried to bring some sense to the situation. 'I am Sherlock Holmes. Take me to your leader.'

'So is it two rooms you booked Doctor Watson, or one?' asked the receptionist pleasantly, a few minutes later. She was a mother of four, Sherlock noted, an ex-nurse and had been working in the hotel for at least ten years, so that fact that the owner had been shot didn't appear to affect her at all.

John smiled patiently. 'Two. He snores and it keeps me up all night.'

'Of course. Then here are your key cards, and if you wouldn't mind being back in the dining room in half an hour I believe the police want to see all the guests together.'

'Really?' Sherlock threw John a delighted glance. 'The police are going to gather all the guests in the hotel together just after a crime and reveal the killer?' He bent close over the reception desk to whisper, 'Was it Miss Plum in the library with the candlestick?'

The receptionist bent forward to match him. 'Mr Cubitt isn't dead, sir. Just be downstairs in thirty minutes.'

Having got what he needed Sherlock headed for the stairs, calling over his shoulder. 'Is it boutique because it still has a ledger of guests names rather than a computer?'

John joined him on the first floor. 'I imagine it also has a computer. Most hotels do. You were reading the register, weren't you – is Abe Slaney staying here?'

'No. A borderline alcoholic, two businessmen having an affair, an elderly woman and a young family from Berkshire.' He raised an eyebrow at John's expression. 'Handwriting John, it's all in the handwriting.'

His bedroom was white, simply decorated but with a range of layered and textured fabrics that looked expensive. There was a scented candle in the middle of the dark oak dinner table, which probably made it boutique, and he sniffed it suspiciously before leaving to search the rest of the hotel. Half an hour later he took up a position in the dining room sitting in a circle of carefully arranged chairs and surrounded by other guests, feeling the sense of smug self-satisfaction that always came over him just before he explained something complicated.

The officer in charge strode in - a thin, grey, neatly presented man at the end of his career, marking time until his thirty years were up. 'Gentlemen, ladies,' he started, in a precise, clipped accent that betrayed no trace of his county of origin. 'As you know Mr Cubitt, the owner of the hotel has been shot. But there's no need for alarm, there's a clear suspect and none of you are in any danger.'

Sherlock put up his hand. 'It wasn't any of them.'

The lead detective frowned in evident annoyance. 'Sir?'

'Oh, just look at them properly.' Sherlock sprang to his feet, gesturing to the woman on his immediate right. 'This one, major indentation on her ring finger but no ring so she's recently divorced after many years of marriage and she's lonely, she's got herself a new cat, although the cat doesn't like her either, judging by the scratches on her legs. Her eyes are yellowish and bloodshot and she's clutching that glass of water almost tight enough to disguise the tremor in her hands – she's an alcoholic, probably the cause of the divorce and she could never have held a gun steady enough to shoot Henry Cubitt.'

'Then this one – early forties, glasses, manicured nails, calluses on the heels of his palms and shiny patches on the sleeves of that jumper - he spends too much time at the computer, or at least that's what he tells his wife. But actually these two men know each other.' He pointed at a younger man on the other side of the circle. 'They signed the register at the same time, have adjoining rooms and both currently have damp hair and are wearing the same aftershave – they'll be able to give each other an alibi.'

He turned to the family on the end – 'And then we have the Barbers. She's really let herself go – greasy hair, stained blouse, mud all over her jeans and he's not much better, hasn't shaved in three days, toothpaste still on his chin and it's all being caused by this one.' He pointed to the gurgling, wide awake baby bottom-shuffling in the direction of the door. 'They're too tired to remember their own names, let alone have the energy to shoot anyone. In fact, your best suspect at the moment is probably Miss Plum in the library with the candlestick, unless you want me to tell you who killed Henry Cubitt.' He looked around for applause, but there was a roomful of quite angry people staring at him instead.

'And you are?'

'Sherlock Holmes. If the internet has made it as far as Norfolk look me up. I'm viral.'

'Or vile,' John muttered from the next chair along.

The officer turned his attention to the rest of the audience. 'Despite what Mr Holmes says, Henry Cubitt is not dead, and none of you are suspects – but you may be witnesses. Mr Cubitt's wife Elsie is missing and I am urgently seeking her in connection with shooting of her husband. Has anyone seen Mrs Cubitt?'

'Missing?' Sherlock sat forward. 'Then she's in danger.'

'Why do you think that Mr Holmes?'

'The four-foot-high message in the poolroom. It says 'Elsie, prepare to meet your God.'


	8. Chapter 8

Karachi

 _He held out his arms, thinking exclusively about how important it was that her tracks led only towards the side of the ship and not away from it. She rested an arm across his shoulder and stepped lightly into his embrace; he lifted her away from the railing and carried her towards the next nearest container. Her hands settled around his neck, and she exhaled a whisper against the side of his throat. 'Why?'_

 _This was the most dangerous part of the plan, without doubt. He assessed her weight, calibrated his stride so his footsteps wouldn't betray he was carrying anything and ignored the question. There was a sense of obligation, of duty towards her that he hadn't been conscious of with any of the other adversaries he'd bested. He'd won the battle and she'd lost, but in a way that wasn't entirely logical, he knew the war wasn't over._

 _Her breath was on his neck, and then more than her breath, her lips, soft and warm and open, pressing a kiss onto a spot just below his right ear. A shiver ran through him, curling down his spine and making his stomach clench._

 _'Automatic sensory response,' he blurted out, knowing she'd have felt it._

 _Her smile curled against his skin. 'Erogenous zone.'_

 _Kicking open the door of the container he dumped her on the bonnet of the anonymous black saloon parked inside but instead of letting go of his neck her hand came round to press against it. For a long moment as she stared at him he found his powers of observation failing, going dim around the edges._

 _'Pulse - elevated,' she said._

 _He regained control with an effort. 'I've just carried you halfway across the ship.'_

 _'Eyes – dilated.'_

 _'It's very dark in here.'_

 _She let him go, and he was definitely sure that she'd let him go, rather than that he'd decided to move away himself. She slid in through the open passenger window while he moved round to the boot and removed the Russian disguise, bloodied boots, and the paper suit underneath, dumping the sweaty pile into a plastic bag. Only after he'd dressed in his familiar uniform of close fitting shirt and trousers did he realise she was watching him in the rear view mirror. He was somehow sure that the next bit of the plan might actually be the most dangerous part._

 _He drove out of the container and off the boat in silence and then lost the car in maze of Karachi back streets that he'd already marked as free from security cameras. It was only a short way to the train station and then she could be on her way and he'd clean and return the car before starting the tortuous journey back to London. He had only another twenty minutes or so in her company._

 _'There's a new passport in the glove box, credit cards, cash, some bank statements and utility bills, a reference from a previous landlord in case you need to rent anywhere. An open train ticket. You're free to go wherever you like but don't be so careless next time.'_

 _'Careless?'_

 _He shot her a sidelong glance, sensing an opportunity to regain the upper hand. 'Careless. I could have found you anywhere in the world.'_

 _'Alright – where have I been?'_

 _'I had you picked up in Kashmir, but you hadn't been there long. Before that, judging by the fact that your hair is much lighter approximately one inch from your head you'd been outside in the sun for a significant period of time, and the shape and shade of the faded henna design on the inside of your left wrist tells me you were in Goa. A holiday though, not for work. You didn't need to work because you'd just earned a large amount of money on your last job. The skin on your face is significantly darker than on the rest of your body, particularly near the hairline so you've been exposed to very strong UV rays with your hair back in a hat or a hood. There are slightly paler marks on your temples indicating the presence of sunglasses which leads me to conclude you were skiing although not recently, because although you have strong acceleration when you run, your stamina is lacking so you haven't been exercising as much these last few weeks. Correlating that with periods of snowfall several months ago I conclude you were in Europe and knowing you've been left with few resources I expect you've been making contact with any of your former clients who might still be friendly. Since these are likely to be people with money and influence I'd guess you were in Davos at the World Economic Forum for a meeting with your client who is likely to be one of the European Finance Ministers or a person of equal significance. Give me a minute and I'll work out which one he is.'_

 _'Sherlock,' she said. 'Stop flirting.'_

 _He shut his mouth with a snap, but then couldn't resist having the final word. 'My point is, I knew where to find you.'_

 _'Only because I told you where I was,' she shot back. 'I've already said your disguises are dreadful. You rang the adult chat line in India and spoke to one of my girls. You said it was a wrong number and you'd put on a fake accent but I screened all the calls personally and I recognised you straightaway. So I allowed you to track me down to a beauty salon I'd never used and let myself get captured. '_

 _He pulled into the train station car park, stopped the engine and faced her with a frown. 'Why?'_

 _'Two reasons. Firstly, because I was tired of running and I thought you might have come up with a reasonable plan to fake my death again – although the jury's still out on that. And secondly because I wanted to see you.'_

 _She reached out and ran one finger of one hand down his cheek and with that single gesture, everything else simply switched off. The bustle of a midday morning in Karachi hushed into silence and the scene on the other side of the car windows blurred into nothing. He could no longer smell the faint tang of her perfume. It was as if that one input of data, the touch of her hand, cancelled out any other external stimuli. It was a moment in which the axis of his world might have turned, his earth moved but as he stared into her eyes he couldn't think of a thing to say. He couldn't think. Seconds passed, a minute, maybe more. He lost track._

 _Then she nodded once to herself and patted his leg. 'You aren't ready. I understand. You won't be able to find me again. But if you need me, when you need me, let me know and I'll find you.' She slipped on the burkha he'd left in the footwell, stashed her new identity documents underneath and got out of the car, leaving him still sitting inside._

 _It was only several years afterwards, while considering a photograph of a fish, that he realised that letting her walk away might have been the most dangerous part of the plan._

 _My novel The Postman's Daughter is currently available on Amazon._


	9. Chapter 9

Some time later Sherlock stood in front of the large expanse of granite that covered the swimming pool wall, which was completely blank.

'Didn't you make a record of it? A photo? Anything?' exclaimed Detective Martin incredulously.

'I wrote it down but I was in London at the time, where the paper is now. If you need proof, there's another message on a website somewhere - John can tell you. And someone must have washed the paint off this wall, ask the cleaning staff.'

'TripAdvisor,' said John, scrolling through his phone. 'There was another message on TripAdvisor, but it's not there now. Mr Cubitt showed us an email, but I don't have a record of that either.'

'So there's no evidence that anyone was stalking Mrs Cubitt at all, as you claim. No sign that this Abe Slaney was anywhere near here. Well Mr Holmes, let me explain how a proper detective works, because I think you've been playing too much Cluedo. Here in Norfolk we need proof, we don't just go around arresting people on the word of a man who think he's Agatha Christie. Mr Cubitt shot her husband and fled. She's my prime suspect. '

'Then how do you explain the footprints in the flowerbed?'

'What are you talking about? There is no flowerbed. The room where Mr Cubitt was shot has patio doors which lead out onto the terrace. No one's been standing around in the garden.'

'You're not looking in the right flowerbeds then. Let me show you.'

'If you're wrong, I'm going to lock you up for wasting police time.'

'Let's start by the garage, Henry Cubitt had mud on his boots when he came to see us – we can track Abraham Slaney from there.'

'Are you making this up as you go along?' whispered John out of the corner of his mouth as they headed round the corner of the hotel in the direction of the converted barn that served as a garage.

Sherlock gave him a look. 'Here – Henry Cubitt, size twelve feet, boots, limited tread. Abe Slaney, size ten, wearing boots with a defined sole. See where he's walked across the gravel?' Sherlock followed the trail to the nearest patch of grass, pointing out the tread stamped into the earth. 'He's been watching Mrs Cubitt for days presumably, hiding in the garage, the woods, lurking around at night and,' he pointed triumphantly. 'Standing in the flowerbeds. And then if we follow him round to the terrace.' Sherlock rounded the corner of the hotel, strode past rattan patio furniture and abandoned cigarette ends. 'We find him here, outside the patio doors, early this morning, where Elsie Cubitt had arranged to meet him.'

'She met him?' John queried. 'Why would she do that if he was stalking her?'

'Because her husband told us she wanted Henry to ignore Abe Slaney and he'd go away. I think she was planning to pay him off. Were the windows open or closed when you found the body?'

'Closed. But there's no body, he's not dead,' Detective Martin clarified.

Sherlock pulled open the patio doors, ignoring the squeak of protest from the police officer and examined the frame for a while, then the carpet, and then moved into the room, pushing uniformed staff out of the way automatically. He straightened, considering. 'Do elderly women generally wear high heeled shoes?'

'Arrest this man,' Detective Martin ordered.

'Early this morning Elsie Cubitt opened this door to Abe Slaney, here are the marks of her heels on the carpet, which is deep enough to have kept the impression. She opened the doors to let him in - this candle by the door has gone out in the draft but the rest are still burning. Candles make a hotel boutique, don't you think? Slaney stood here, there's mud from his shoes. They spoke and then Mr Cubitt came in unexpectedly – he was found in his dressing gown, he'd been woken from bed - but he'd brought his gun with him and he fired at Slaney. He missed, hitting the door frame – see the hole? There was a struggle, much of this furniture has been moved, look at the marks on the carpet, and in the struggle, the gun went off, killing Mr Cubitt outright.'

'He isn't dead.'

Sherlock waved a hand. 'Irrelevant. Mr Slaney doesn't want money, what he wants is Elsie, or he wouldn't have followed her from America, so now he has what he wants. Her husband is dead and he has a gun and he knows that the CCTV isn't working because he disabled it himself, it's easily done. So he and Elsie just walk out of the hotel.'

'And the elderly woman in high heels?' asked John.

'Is the only bit that doesn't belong. Over here, look.' He gestured towards a chair near the fireplace, separated from the patio doors by a swathe of rug. 'Someone was sitting in this chair, I see two stiletto heel marks in the carpet and the half empty cup of tea is also a bit of a giveaway. She must have been here at the same time as Mr and Mrs Cubitt or the hotel staff would have moved the cup. There are no other heel marks in the rest of the room, so whoever she was, she sat and drank while Mr Cubitt was murdered.'

'He's out of surgery, by the way.'

'And she's elderly because she couldn't get up and stop Slaney kidnapping Elsie or because she drinks tea?'

Sherlock picked up the cup. 'There was a woman's signature in the reception guest book, it looked like an elderly hand but she wasn't in the dining room with us earlier.' He replaced it in the saucer. 'Lipstick. Whoever she is she needs to disguise her identity, she's not concerned by violence and she's with Mrs Cubitt right now, which probably means Elsie's in considerably less danger than she might otherwise have been.'

'So where are they now?' chipped in Detective Martin, interrupting the logical chain of deductive reasoning Sherlock was about to put together to answer that very question.

He opted for sarcasm instead. 'I don't know – but if you were Abe Slaney, if you were in love with a woman you hadn't seen for some time who'd been living on the other side of the world and if you'd finally found her after months of searching, what would you do?'

'No,' said John quietly. 'What would you do?'

Sherlock's mouth answered before his mind had properly processed the unconscious thought. 'Are there any other hotels in the area?' he asked the detective.

John had that awful smug smirk on his face again. 'And is that what you did before? In Karachi?'

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, still attempting to identify where his answer had come from. It was an emotional leap of the kind he usually didn't, or couldn't make, or at least not without some thought and a strong cup of tea, but he recognised the truth of it on a deeper level. He was disturbed to find that he still had a deeper level. 'There aren't any boutique hotels in Karachi.'

'There aren't many in Norfolk,' Detective Martin steered the conversation back to more familiar territory. 'The nearest one is Elridge's, a couple of miles away. But Slaney could be staying anywhere – there are hundreds of bed and breakfasts, rented rooms, holiday lets, why wouldn't he be in one of those?'

Sherlock knew what the right answer was and there was a brief silence as the urge to show off fought the instinct for privacy. 'Because he's in love with her. He hasn't seen her in some time. He won't want to get it wrong.'

He ignored John's sudden grin, focused on what the policeman was saying.

'But Slaney threatened her – you said he wrote 'prepare to meet your God' on the wall of her swimming pool.'

Sherlock frowned. 'He's been sending her messages, people don't always express themselves very well when they're in love, or so I'm told.'

John quoted, ''He won't want to get it wrong?' By 'getting it wrong' you mean he won't want to stay in a hotel she won't like, or he'll take her out for dinner and end up in a Harvester by mistake.'

'I doubt he even knows what a Harvester is,' Sherlock replied, sullenly.

My novel, The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer is available now on Amazon.


	10. Chapter 10

'What a touching theory.' Detective Martin's tone was disparaging. 'How very sentimental. But you'll excuse me for searching every building in the area in case Slaney's hiding Mrs Cubitt and your mystery woman in a pigsty. Stay here. The real detectives are going to do some work.' He strode out of the room with a swing in his step, leaving Sherlock to stare fixedly into the swimming pool.

John took a while to smooth the smile off his face. 'So – do you fancy a swim?'

'No. Let's have tea at Elridge's.'

Enquiries with reception revealed that the other hotel was walking distance away but was a filthy hovel compared to Riding Thorpe Manor Hotel. At Elridge's the sheets were never changed, the staff were always rude and guests complained vociferously and didn't go back. It also had slightly better reviews on TripAdvisor, according to John. They walked as the afternoon light grew misty and dim and Sherlock pawed at regular intervals through the bushes.

'There she is again, look. Heel marks.'

'Elsie Cubitt?'

'No, no, the other one. She keeps walking in mud while the other two are on the path. It must be deliberate.'

'She's leaving a trail. She knows the police will be following her.'

'I doubt it. The police aren't following her, are they? Or at least, not in any useful sense. I don't know what she's doing.'

Elridge's was a much smaller and older structure than Riding Thorpe Manor, a Tudor era mansion complete with herringbone brickwork and weathered beams, with a thatched roof and roses around the door. Where Mr Cubitt's hotel was full of high ceilinged, light filled Victorian order, this place was a rustic, higgledy piggledy collection of small rooms and log burning fireplaces with large dogs sprawled in front of them. There were no scented candles. But a candle of a different kind appeared on Sherlock's phone while John was buying drinks.

It was a video call, but there wasn't anyone on the other end, and the volume was off so the only clue he had was a live stream of a lit candle, in extreme close up, sitting in a saucer on a dark oak table. There was something wrong with it as well, the wax was too yellow and it didn't melt much like ordinary wax did. It oozed rather than dribbling down the tallow in an unctuous slide and the flame didn't seem to be consuming so much as caressing it.

He put his hand out to John and clicked his fingers, finding a pint glass placed in it instead. 'No, phone.'

'What for? Where's yours?'

Sherlock placed his on the table, finding it hard not to watch the slow ripple of the wax onto the plate.

'Is that live?' asked John after a few seconds.

'It appears so.'

'You're having a conversation with a candle? Can it answer back? What does it say?'

'Concentrate, John. Are there any restaurants in the world which serve edible candles?'

'Edible – oh, yes, there's that new one in London, Story. The candles are made of beef dripping, you're supposed to dip bread into them and they do edible coal. You can eat the spoons as well, I think. Expensive, gets good reviews.' He frowned at the screen for a little while. 'You're being propositioned.'

'Yes. But very ineffectively. She's in London and I'm in the middle of nowhere.'

'And are you going?'

Sherlock cut the call, threw the phone back in his pocket. 'No. I'm working. I expect I'm supposed to arrive before the candle goes out. I'd never make it.'

'You could try.'

'I'd fail, and the outcome would be the same as if I'd never tried at all. In a minute, you and I need to have a loud conversation about going back to our rooms and then we need to search the corridors.'

'What are we looking for?'

'Muddy stilettos. There can't be too many of them around. Look for the marks on the carpet.'

While John searched the first floor Sherlock quickly picked up a trail along the ground floor corridor, coming in through a fire exit and leading up the back stairs and into a secluded suite on the second floor. The muddy squares on the on the carpet became progressively harder to see and he paused outside the door for some time, listening, to be sure there was movement within. Then he texted John for back up and prepared for action.

'You be room service,' John hissed from the other side of the door frame as they prepared to barge into the bedroom and confront an armed kidnapper and his hostage. 'It's your turn.'

'No, you be room service. You're always room service – you enjoy it.'

John shot him a black look, but knocked on the door. 'Room service,' he called.

A female voice from inside answered without hesitation. 'We didn't order any room service.'

John shrugged at Sherlock. 'Um. Its complimentary. Free champagne to celebrate getting top spot on TripAdvisor. I can take it away if you like.'

'Top spot?' Footsteps trotted across the carpet and the latch clicked open.

Sherlock put his shoulder to the gap and barged it wide, tumbling into the room ready to take on a dangerous, gun toting, American bad guy and finding a small brunette female instead.

'Hello,' she greeted him brightly. 'You must be Sherlock.' In her hands she held an automatic weapon as casually as if it were a nail file, and on the bed, bound and gagged, was a very large man dressed head to toe in black, who was glaring across the room and wriggling ineffectually.

'Elsie Cubitt?' John recovered quickly.

'I am,' she said. 'And how is my husband?'

Sherlock opened his mouth but John got in first. 'He's out of surgery. He's injured, but I don't think it's life threatening.'

The tension ran out of Elise Cubitt on the back of a tremendous sigh and she passed John the gun before collapsing into a chair. 'I've been so worried, I wanted to go to the hospital but I couldn't leave him.' She gestured towards the bed. 'What took you so long to find us, you should have been here hours ago? Where are the police?'

John took out his mobile immediately and placed a call to Detective Martin while Sherlock examined Abe Slaney's bonds, finding the knots secure and likely to get tighter if he struggled.

'Why don't you start from the beginning, Mrs Cubitt,' he asked. 'Pretend I have no idea what's going on.'

Elsie shot him a confused look, a frown pulling together carefully curated eyebrows. 'She said you knew everything,' she complained. 'You're the famous detective in the funny hat.'

'Pardon?'

'Well I'm not famous and I don't have a hat,' John cut in. 'And I was told Abe Slaney had kidnapped you, not the other way around. What's going on Mrs Cubitt?'

She sighed, relaxed in the chair. 'I wasn't always Mrs Cubitt. And I wasn't always Elsie either. Before I married I was a stripper in Las Vegas, maybe my husband told you? He does tend to tell everyone. Anyways, I was having trouble with a client.' She jerked her head.

'Him over there. He wouldn't leave me alone. Turned up at every show, began writing me these little notes all in code - stick figures like the ones back at the hotel. He showed me how to read it, told me they were our secret, a way to communicate without my employer noticing. I wrote notes back using the stick men to tell him to go away. He turned up at my condo, threatened my flatmate with a gun, started trailing me everywhere I went, telling me how much he loved me. I was scared. I had to get away. So I came over to London to see a friend. She wasn't a stripper but we were in the same line of work and we'd met a couple of times in the US. That's when I met Henry.' She took a deep breath.

'He was in London and we were staying in the same hotel – it was love at first sight for both of us. We married quickly and I never went back home. But pretty soon afterwards I heard that Abe was looking for me and I knew he wouldn't stop so I asked my friend for help. I couldn't tell Henry what was going on, and I didn't want him getting involved, he has the reputation of the hotel to think of. My friend came up with a plan. The police don't take stalking seriously over here, you see. They'd let Abe carry on for years until he killed me, so the only way to get him locked up or deported was to trick him into doing something worse. '

'When the first messages arrived I left them round the house for Henry to see. I read bits from your blog out loud over dinner, Doctor Watson. I pretended to be scared – it wasn't much of a stretch. I followed the plan. Eventually, Henry went running off to fetch you. My friend said you'd crack the code, you'd realise I was in danger and you'd come out here to save me and convince the police Abe was dangerous. But you took such a long time we had to start without you. My friend was very cross, she went back to London to leave you a message, she said. I was supposed to let Abe kidnap me and then you were supposed to come in and rescue me. But it all went wrong. Henry woke up early and Abe shot him and I was kidnapped anyway. My friend had to deal with Abe herself. He'll be put in prison, won't he? It'll be stalking, kidnapping and attempted murder – he won't bother me again?'

John looked to Sherlock, but he was too busy thinking to reply. 'I'd expect so Mrs Cubitt. Elsie. I'm sorry, can we go back a step – are you saying that you set all this up? This is a trap to catch Abe Slaney?'

Elsie Cubitt sat forward. 'Catch him? Yes. I want him out of my life for good. The police needed to know he was a real threat, and my friend said that if the great Sherlock Holmes was involved in solving the crime, it would get so much publicity that they'd have no choice but to put Abe away for a really long time. Now can I go and see my husband? He needs me.'

Sherlock raised a hand. 'If you answer two questions. First – how long ago was it that you came to stay with your friend in London? And second, did she really say 'great'?'

Elsie Cubitt frowned, shrugged her coat back on and headed for the door. 'A year ago and yes, she called you great. Although lately she's called you a lot of other things as well. Goodbye.' She strode into the corridor and Sherlock was about two seconds behind her.

'And where are you going?' John yelled after his departing back.

'Maybe the candle hasn't gone out.'

My historical romance novel, The Postman's Daughter is available now on Amazon.


	11. Chapter 11

In the cab on the way back to Riding Thorpe Manor, after checking train times back to London and working out exactly how long it would take him to get to the restaurant she'd chosen, Sherlock examined the pictures on his phone in more detail. Now that he knew what he was looking for he was ashamed he'd missed it in the first place. The snow was wrong, for a start, too granular, too coarse to be natural, although she'd tried to hide it with the close up angle. The leaves under the fish weren't flat, curling with age and the fish itself had lost its freshly caught shine and was dull grey. Neither of these pictures had been taken outside London. They had been created for another purpose, although he wasn't entirely clear what that was.

She was ahead of him again, in a number of ways.

He ran up the stairs to his bedroom, pausing only to grab his luggage from the wardrobe where he'd thrown it and then his mental filing system flagged an error.

Something about the room was different now than it had been. He sniffed – even the air was different, it smelt odd, unpleasant, slightly …meaty. The candle in the middle of the dark oak table that he'd noticed before was half burnt down and he pushed a fingernail into the wax experimentally, licking it off. It wasn't wax.

She'd been in his hotel room. Inviting him for dinner that wasn't really dinner again, distracting him. Except that he hadn't been distracted, not this time. He hadn't gone tearing back to London, abandoning his case to rush to a restaurant and meet her. And when her previous message arrived, the one with the snow, he'd still got on the train at Liverpool Street Station, he hadn't dumped the dancing men then either and raced away to investigate her location. Was it too much of a stretch to believe she might have been watching him as he boarded the train? The first message, the fish and the leaf, had distracted him to start with, slowed down his thought processes and made him re-live every brief moment with her in Karachi. But he hadn't gone flying off to Malaysia to find her. Work had still come first.

The text he'd sent her - _You know where to find me_ – was only a statement of fact. She knew exactly where to find him – in his hotel room, on the train, at his home - but he hadn't lifted a finger to locate her. It was only recently he'd begun to realise what impact that lack of response might have. How devastating and destructive emotion could become when the object of your affection didn't return it – he'd been picking coffin splinters out of his hands for weeks after that lesson.

A sense of obligation washed over him again – at least, he called it obligation. Irene had feelings for him and therefore he owed her – for that reason alone he had to track her down and he only had one clue as to her whereabouts.

He grabbed his bag, jumped in the waiting taxi and headed back to the train station. The journey back to London, late night, on an empty train winding through the flat, featureless countryside was one of the longest trips of his life. There was no one to talk to, no pressing work to occupy his thoughts so he sat and stared at his reflection in the window. He didn't particularly like the man looking back. He took the stairs to Baker Street two at a time, burst through the door and half ran to the mantelpiece, picking up the object he'd travelled miles to find – a puzzle box, light, cheap, unfathomable.

For a year he'd been unable to open it. Now he knew he'd run out of time.

He raised it above his head, preparing to smash it onto the hearth and break open its secrets.

John stopped him, carefully balancing two cups of tea and a packet of biscuits on a makeshift tray on his way back from the kitchen. Sherlock froze, surprised, but John just shrugged, sending a wave of liquid onto the carpet. 'I drove back, borrowed Elsie Cubitt's car since you'd already left for the station. Slaney's been arrested and charged with everything Detective Martin could think of and Henry Cubitt's going to make a full recovery. Case closed. Was the candle still burning? Did you make it back in time?'

Sherlock lowered the box, said slowly. 'I don't know. I have to open this before I find out.'

John put down the cups, held his hands out for a catch and Sherlock threw the box to him. 'What's inside?'

'I'm not sure. At first I thought it was some sort of token, a clue that would tell me whereabouts in the world she was living but she's been in London for the last year at least, and if you rattle it whatever is inside sounds like metal.'

'You're talking about Elsie Cubitt's friend.'

'No. And yes. It's her. The Woman. That's who Mrs Cubitt was describing.'

'What – Irene Adler? She's the one who set up Abe Slaney? She wrote the dancing men on our door? That's who I've just trailed around Norfolk for half the afternoon? You said she was waiting in a restaurant somewhere.'

'She was in my hotel room.'

'And you didn't tell me? I don't disapprove. I think it's good for you to have a hobby, but don't lie to me about it, I'm not your wife.'

'No, no.' Sherlock shook his head. 'I didn't know she was there. I don't know where she is now. I think she's been sending me messages to see if I respond and I didn't – I didn't try to find her and now the only clue I have to where she is, is that.' He pointed.

John raised his arm. 'Then we'll smash the box. What do you think is inside – an address? A phone number?'

Sherlock felt his face redden slightly. 'A key.'

John's arm came down a few notches. 'A key? A car key?' His eyes widened. 'A house key? Oh – the key to her house, now I see. You really are being propositioned aren't you? So Irene Adler sent you the key to her house inside this box and all you have to do is solve the puzzle and open it. She's seducing you by setting you a riddle. How very romantic. How bloody stupid. Why don't you just pick up the phone and ask her where she lives if you're that desperate to see her? I thought rational adults were supposed to talk about their feelings?'

Sherlock shifted his weight to his other foot. 'That's not how it works – this is exactly what happened when she sent me her phone last time round. It was locked, and I had to try to open it.'

'Yes, but last time you cracked it in the end – she'd locked the phone with your name and that's how you knew she was in love with you. You told me she'd got too involved, that the key to the code was the key to her heart. Oh.' John lowered his arm, handed the box back to Sherlock as quickly as if it was contaminated with something contagious.

Sherlock felt his face get ready for a full flush.

His friend continued. 'That explains why you haven't been able to open it. She's really very clever, I'm impressed. This time the key to cracking the code isn't the key to her heart – it's yours isn't it? You can't open the box until you prove you love her.'

Sherlock knew his cheeks were an unbecoming shade of scarlet. 'And I haven't the first idea how I'm supposed to do that.'

John considered, taking a sip of his cooling tea. 'You're completely screwed, mate.'

My next book, The Car Crash Bride will be published on 21 June by The Wild Rose Press - I hope you'll consider reading it.


	12. Chapter 12

'Then we'll smash it.' John had already suggested this about a dozen times and Sherlock was reaching the end of his patience.

'I can't smash it- she'll have put some kind of acid or explosive inside that will destroy the contents if I break it open. And even if she hasn't she knows I won't risk it.'

'Have you tried talking to it? Maybe it's set to open at a certain sound frequency?'

'I've tried talking to it,' he confirmed, although he really wished he didn't have to admit to that.

John was making an effort to keep his face straight. 'What did you say to it?'

Sherlock said nothing, simply glared into the fire.

'You didn't, did you? You did? You told the box 'I love you?' John snorted, clamped a hand to his mouth.

'It's not set to a sound frequency,' Sherlock snarled.

'Then DNA? Does it trigger the opening mechanism if your DNA is on it? Have you…' John was trying to get the words out through barely supressed laughter. 'Have you kissed it?'

Sherlock stalked to the window, picked up his violin and attacked the opening bars of a Paganini solo.

Behind him John had stopped talking, and from the muffled sounds he was making was doubled over with laughter. 'Have you bought it flowers? Taken it out for dinner? Sherlock – have you slept with it?'

He slammed down the violin, caught himself at the last moment. 'It isn't locked with DNA; it doesn't open when I touch it.'

'Sorry, sorry.' John waved his hands around, flopped back into his armchair. 'It's just that this is so…Alright. I'm calm. Let's approach this logically, the same way you approach everything else.' He put his hands together as if he were praying, rested his chin on his index fingers.

Slumped in the opposite chair, Sherlock disliked the role reversal intensely.

'So how are you, Sherlock Holmes, going to demonstrate you're in love?'

'I don't do 'love'.'

'Well, that's not logical for a start. How do you explain managing not to kill Mycroft all these years? You must love him on some level. And your sister, you saved her because you showed her you loved her. Isn't that the difference between you and Euros anyway – without the emotional context she was interested in, without love, you'd be locked up in an institution the same way she is. You're capable of love, but you hide it better than anyone else I've ever met.'

'I'd rather smash the box than have this conversation. Maybe there's enough explosive in there to kill me.'

'I even understand why – your first experience of caring about someone else resulted in him being murdered. That would make anyone think twice about showing their emotions.'

'Is this helping? In any rational sense?'

John stood up and marched over to the window with a determined tread, retrieving something from a drawer and throwing it across the room. Sherlock caught it by reflex, replacing it safely in his pocket where it couldn't get damaged.

'What do you need that for?' John asked. 'You remember everything. You have perfect recall when you want to. So why do you keep Irene Adler's old phone? Sentiment – that's why. Love – that's why. Deep down, you're just the same as the rest of us, but you're too arrogant to show it.'

Realisation jerked Sherlock out of the chair. 'Just because I don't talk about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist,' he said, moving past John and reaching into the same drawer. 'Just because something is different, or unconventional, or unique, doesn't make it wrong.'

'I never said it did. She's a lesbian dominatrix and you're certainly different. I'm not judging.'

Sherlock looked at the item he'd removed from the drawer for an instant, then pushed the end of it into the tiny join that sealed one side of the puzzle box to the other and ran it all the way round, replacing the box on the desk.

'What do you have there?'

Sherlock opened his palm to show a bent and withered piece of reed, still knotted into the recognisable shape of a heart. 'A birthday present. It arrived on the doorstep a year before the box did. It isn't useful, it serves no purpose, it's superfluous to my daily life in every way. But,' he deposited it carefully back in the drawer. 'It's a unique gift. I didn't have anything like it before and I doubt I ever will again. I'm not going to throw it away. That drawer is bombproof, by the way, you might want to put your passport in it this time in case my sister drives another drone through the window.'

Behind him on the desk a fizzing noise came from the puzzle box and a few bubbles of a white, evil smelling substance leaked from one corner. Sherlock picked it up, examined it closely. 'Acetone soaked into the leaf reacting with the glue. That should be long enough.' He twisted both sides at the same time and watched a paper wrapped key clatter onto the desk. A mixture of trepidation and excitement he'd felt before lent a tremor to his hand and caught his normally steady breathing as he opened the page to read the message.

'Well?' asked John. 'Another clue?'

'An address. She's been living two streets away.' He tightened his hand around the key, answered the question John hadn't asked 'Well, of course I'm going.'

My first book, The Postman's Daughter is available now on Amazon and the second, The Car Crash Bride will be out in a few weeks. Thanks to anyone who considers picking them up.


	13. Chapter 13

The front door was tucked away in a side street, dimly lit with no CCTV and plenty of cover for anyone needing to escape in a hurry. He inserted the key into the black front door, heard the ping and whizz of a heavy duty security system releasing as he turned it. She'd have cameras on the entrance somewhere, he was sure, she'd know he'd arrived. He swallowed, stepped over the threshold.

There was a steep staircase in front of him leading up to the top floor of the converted Victorian tenement, with white painted walls and exposed oak treads. He climbed the stairs slowly, his heart beating faster than the exercise really warranted. There was another door at the top, which he opened cautiously, but there was nothing on the other side except a large and empty hall with a coat stand. Faint noises came from the back of the flat.

After some thought he removed his coat, hung it on an empty hook and after some further thought left his shoes alongside the knee high boots currently waiting next to the door. The etiquette was a struggle, but he thought having a key probably meant he wasn't supposed to behave like a visitor.

He tracked the noise, looking into the rooms that branched out on either side. A living room with two armchairs placed on either side of the fire and a large and comfortable sofa nearby strewn with cushions. There were pictures on the walls fighting for space amidst the bookshelves, and a single desk in the corner, the reading lamp still on. A dining room with a table big enough for two, although only one place was regularly used. A high end kitchen, spotless and gleaming and a smaller room next door, a study, although the table in this one was clean and the shelves empty.

The next door opened into a bedroom, which he entered and then waited quietly until she noticed him.

'You're too late,' she snapped. Her tone was flat and hard. 'I'm leaving.'

Her hair was shorter, that was the first difference, and lighter in colour but left loose on her shoulders and there were more lines around her eyes than there had been. The simple dress she wore had been made for her and the jewellery was subtle, but expensive. The faintest trace of her perfume drifted across the room. She was packing clothes into a suitcase.

'You aren't leaving.' He took a few steps closer. 'There are white carpets in the living room, a white sofa and the pictures are nailed to the wall, this isn't a rental apartment, you own it. You have enough books to constitute a small library and there are no restraint marks on the end of this bed so you don't work here, this is your home. Given its floorplan there must be a second bedroom and since you have no children, probably don't invite many guests and take pride in your appearance, it must be full of clothes. That's a small suitcase, so you're planning a short break, no more than two or three days and you're planning to come back because you haven't switched off the appliances in the kitchen.'

She stopped, stared at him directly for the first time. 'Sherlock,' she said. 'Are you flirting?'

He felt a small, sick smile leak onto his face 'Yes.'

She put her hands on her hips, didn't return the smile and he couldn't read the emotions that flashed across her face.

Although she seemed relatively unchanged by her time away, he wondered what differences she was observing in him since the last time they'd met. He felt like a different man – nervous, lacking in confidence, out of control and he didn't like it at all. From the moment he'd realised what kind of puzzle the box represented, on the train on the way back from Norfolk, he hadn't been pleased by the changes he saw in himself. Meeting his sister had forced him a few short steps on an emotional journey, but he still had a long way to go. Standing here, knowing he was being examined, he wondered if it was too late to turn back.

'I don't want anything from you,' she announced suddenly. 'I don't want your hand in marriage, I don't want your children, I don't even want you to hold me afterwards. I sent you a key so you could come and go as you please but you aren't moving in.'

He blinked, surprised. 'I have no intention of moving in.'

'And I can buy my own flowers, chocolate and underwear, never eat breakfast and certainly not in bed, will not attend any pre-planned or spontaneous romantic weekends away and if I find you describing yourself on social media as 'in a relationship' I will go back to Karachi.'

His mouth dropped open. 'But, you sent me the key to your house. You invited me here.'

She shrugged. 'Only because I owe you. You tried to save my life. Ineptly, as it turned out. I had the Russians after me for six months before I managed to straighten out that little misunderstanding.'

'And this,' he waved his hand to indicate the entire situation. 'This flat set up for two. Two chairs by the fire. Periodicals on the shelves I haven't read. The empty room where I could work. All this is because you owe me?'

She stared at him, put her hands on her hips. 'All of this is mine. My chairs. My books. My office.'

'But you locked your phone with my name,' he pleaded, even more uncertain now than when he'd crossed the threshold.

'You wrote me sad songs. You stopped eating when you thought I was dead.'

'The chemistry of love? Asking me for dinner? All those text messages?'

'Lying to your best friend and your brother for years that you didn't know I was alive? Never changing my text alert?' she shot back.

'You took your clothes off to impress me.'

'You solved crimes to impress me.'

'Then what do you want from me?' He heard the desperation in his own voice, the fear that every assumption was wrong, every conclusion illogical, every answer incorrect.

She came up close to him, so close he could feel her breath on his face, so close the shine of her blue eyes swallowed the rest of the light in the room. 'I want your attention,' she said. 'While you are here I want your conversation, I want your trust and I want you to be honest with me. But most of all…' She came half a pace closer, reached up and ran a single finger of one hand down his cheek. 'I want to watch you when you come.'

He dipped his head and kissed her for want of a better answer. It was a hard kiss, and she opened her mouth beneath it instantly, absorbing the force. He rammed his tongue inside her, spent a few minutes sliding it in and out before she responded, clamping her teeth around his lower lip and biting it hard enough to shock him into breaking off.

'You've been practising,' she hissed, and there was no question that it was an accusation, rather than a compliment.

'It was for a case,' he shrugged, and since she'd got her hands on his shirt, his jacket came off with the shrug. 'It didn't mean anything.'

Her hands were on the buttons, releasing then swiftly with practised fingers until his chest was exposed. 'Don't mention it again,' she ordered in a low tone, laced with aggression. 'In fact, forget it ever happened.' She stripped his shirt off unceremoniously, threw it hard into the corner of the room, then lifted herself on tiptoes and began to kiss his neck.

Shivers shot through him at the touch of her lips on his skin and he had to find the sore spot on his lip and bite down on it to remind himself not to move.

He both wanted this and didn't want it – sex with her would be pleasurable, intense, revelatory even, but it would mean losing control of everything he valued about himself. His purity of thought, his edge, would be lost, dulled by sentiment, weakened by emotion.

She kissed her way down his chest, her tongue flicking over his nipples, teeth nibbling, lips sucking.

He clenched his fists, felt the sweat rise on his forehead.

She knelt at his feet, began unbuttoning his trousers.

All this he had foreseen, anticipating and dreading it in equal measure, but he'd imagined there would be a solution, that he'd find a way to enjoy the physical without compromising his intellect. His trousers were round his ankles when she stood up and he noted miserably how much his body was enjoying the physical contact while his mind rebelled.

She rose, presented her back to him, and, with mechanical precision, he unzipped her dress, simply watching as she removed her underwear and leaned back against him, utterly naked as she had always been in his mind. Reaching down for the arms hanging limply by his sides she wrapped them around her waist, resting her head on his chest.

'Think, Sherlock,' she said. 'You're moderately clever. Think.'

He had no idea what he was supposed to be thinking about, if it wasn't the way she pivoted to face him and then grazed her breasts all the way down his chest, his thighs, until she was kneeling on the floor again, gazing up at him. Her eyes dark, her mouth moist. She sprang him out of his underwear, pulling it down with a sharp jerk and he stepped out of the remains of his modesty. Her lips opened, and she maintained unbroken eye contact as she took him into her mouth.

The sensation was instantaneous, a sudden peak of sensual pleasure that had him stifling a groan. He felt her tongue caressing the smoother skin, seeking out and tormenting the join underneath with strong, determined flicks, and then she opened her throat and swallowed him down.

He watched himself disappear into her mouth, unable to control the shaking in his legs, the harsh rasp of breath through his nose. She pulled back, teeth and tongue dragging slowly and he tried to think of something, anything to delay the tremendous climax building in his groin.

Think. He had a key. Think. He could leave when he chose.

She was doing it again, circling him, round and round with her tongue, faster and faster and her hand came up to cup the softer parts of him that her tongue couldn't reach. Wet noise filled the room.

Think. She didn't want anything from him. He could leave when he chose.

This was a safe space, more than a safe word, a safe house, a place where he could be someone else and then walk away. She'd sent him a box with his heart inside and now he was here, in this house, this safe, secure compartment where he could store his emotions so they didn't escape into the rest of his life. There were partitions inside it, he saw, one in which he could sleep with her and then go, another in which he could stay for a while, wake up with her the next morning, talk to her over the breakfast table, another in which he lived here.

He looked down at her in wonder.

She wrapped her hand around him, her grip hard, her pull insistent, and the suction inside her mouth increased a fraction. She winked.

He had no idea why she would have set all this up, presented him with a maze of clues he had no choice but to follow, given him a puzzle that would open up his heart and then provided a place where he could let it out safely. She was a riddle without an answer. She was on her knees in front of him and he was about to explode down her throat.

He took a hasty step backwards, bent low and raised her up, enfolded her face in his hands and kissed her properly this time, no probing tongue and clumsy desire, but with as much tenderness as he knew how to show. He felt her smile beneath his lips.

Then he flipped her backwards onto the bed and spread her legs. She propped herself up on one elbow, watched him as he took a first tentative taste. One hand came out to rest on his head and he soon gathered by the gentle pressure to the left or the right, and by the way she winced when he got it wrong, exactly what he was supposed to do. Eventually, sometime after she'd wrapped her legs around his head and collapsed backwards on the sheets, after he'd noticed she gasped louder when he penetrated her with his fingers at the same time, when his tongue had flicked and rasped and curled around the spot between her legs until she was rigid beneath him, he felt a tug on his hair.

He clambered up her body and with a low, long held groan, thrust himself inside her. Her eyes snapped open and as he looked into them there was a moment when the axis of his world turned and his earth moved. He knew why she had set all of this in motion for him, why a lesbian dominatrix would allow herself to be pinned to a bed while a man repeatedly drove himself between her thighs. He looked at her and he knew the answer, because he felt it too.

It was the same reason he had saved her life, and even if he never managed to say the words, and even if the sentiment stayed locked inside the four walls of this flat, still he knew that he had loved, and was loved in return.

He looked into her face, flushed and sweaty with exertion. 'I will be holding you afterwards,' he promised. 'Get used to it.'

Her hips twisted beneath him, her neck arched and she called his name as she climaxed, her nails ripping into his back.

He held on long enough to see her eyes flutter open and then, quite deliberately, he let go.

He saw nothing but her face, noticed nothing, deduced nothing, thought nothing and concentrated on feeling instead. The feeling of her tight, wet embrace, the rise and fall of her hips, the hard rub of her nipples on his chest and the exquisite storm breaking inside him. He was conscious of a string of words falling from his mouth, much too fast to be understood, of the shaking in his shoulders, the desperate ram of his body into hers as he sought release.

Then it was over, and he held her gaze as the orgasm took him, crying out with the intensity of it, and with the expression in her eyes as she watched him give himself to her completely.

The End.

Or possibly end of part one. I wrote another half to this but I'm not sure whether to post it or not. Either way thanks very much to everyone for reading - my novel The Postman's Daughter is available now on Amazon and my new novel The Car Crash Bride will be out in June, both by Sally Anne Palmer.


	14. Chapter 14

Six months later - September

Sherlock pointed at the pale, sweaty, morbidly obese woman in the consulting chair. 'You have five minutes,' he said. 'Go.' He checked his watch.

'There's a ghost in my bedroom,' she replied immediately, without any hesitation and in a tone of supreme assurance.

In the opposite chair, John snorted. 'Who are you going to call?'

Sherlock gave him a blank look. 'The police? I hardly think so.'

Their client gave John a vacant look. 'A medium? I tried that. She said it was the ghost of my sister.'

'And do you have a sister?' asked Sherlock, ignoring John's distraction.

'I do,' she said.

'And is she dead?'

'She is. But she wasn't green.'

John interjected again, to very little purpose, in Sherlock's view. 'You're being haunted by a green ghost and you don't know who to call? Come on – hasn't anybody else heard that before?'

Sherlock frowned, indicating to John to shut up. 'I haven't. And I don't think this is a moment for levity, do you? Miss Stoner has lost her sister. How exactly did she die? You have two and a half minutes.'

'She was murdered.'

Sherlock sat back in his chair, adjusting his mental stopwatch to account for John's interruption. 'Go on.'

'It was a dark and stormy night.' Helen Stoner licked her lips, glanced briefly around the room and sat forward. 'The day before my sister's wedding.'

John held up a hand. 'If I could just stop you there. What time of night was it? Exactly?'

'Three o'clock.'

'In the morning?'

'The afternoon.'

'Alright. It was a dark and stormy afternoon. How stormy? A light drizzle? Bit of a shower?'

'It wasn't stormy,' she clarified, taking a long slurp of the Coke she'd brought with her from the waiting room. 'It was a sunny day. Middle of the afternoon two months ago and the weather was about the same as it is now. I was sweating like a pig.'

'Excellent,' said John. 'I'm glad we got that straight. Carry on.'

'We were on a hen do, just me and my twin sister Julia. She was marrying Stephen from the supermarket, do you know him?'

'One minute left,' Sherlock intoned. 'And I only need the relevant details, not every single thought that crosses your mind.'

'We'd caught the bus into London, it was a big day, you know? She'd just come into some money, quit her job as a cleaner and she was really looking forward to the wedding. She'd bought a massive dress.'

Sherlock cleared his throat.

'Anyway, we'd been drinking for a while when Julia said she was hungry, so we looked for someone nice for afternoon tea, posh-like, I thought I'd treat her.'

John said, 'Tea at the Ritz then? Claridges?'

'No, the Krispy Kreme shop on the high street. So, we were eating and Julia had just started her fourth doughnut when it happened. She grabbed at her neck like this.' Miss Stoner demonstrated for at least thirty seconds of her allotted time, making gagging noises of surprising authenticity. 'Then with her last breath she said it. The sprinkled brand. That was all. Then she stopped breathing. They called the ambulance of course, but it was too late. She'd been poisoned.'

'Poisoned?' John repeated incredulously. 'I thought you said she choked to death on a doughnut.'

'Well, that was the mystery,' Miss Stoner responded. 'She only ever ate plain doughnuts, the glazed ring ones, but because it was a special occasion and I was paying, she went a bit wild. She chose one of the chocolate ones with the sprinkles on top, and that's what killed her. Whoever planted it in the shop must have known we were going to come in and injected it with arsenic.'

Sherlock sighed. 'And the ghost?' he asked, to cover the last few seconds.

'Comes into my room in the early hours of the morning. I hear a metallic noise, like a bell ringing, which wakes me up, and I have a sense that someone else is in the room with me. Once I managed to flick my lighter on just at the right moment and I saw the edge of its dress disappear under the bed. It was green.'

John made a point of looking at his watch. 'Well, thank you so much for your time, Miss Stoner, but I think your five minutes are up.'

Sherlock raised a hand, no more than mildly interested, which was much more engaged than he'd been in any other recent case. 'You have a ground floor flat,' he said, since it was patently obvious. 'Do you sleep with the windows and doors closed?'

She nodded. 'Helps with my asthma.'

'Then go home and wait for us, where is it you live?'

'Stoke Moran. Closest stop is Stoke Newington on the overground, or you can get the bus.'

John waited until she'd left the room before complaining. 'You're taking the ghost case? Even though she's a liar, a fantasist and probably never even had a sister in the first place. You'll take her case, but you won't do the one about the treaty that Mycroft has been asking you to look at for months? I don't understand you at the moment. I really don't.'

'Ah – thanks for the reminder.' He took the phone from his inside pocket and sent a quick text to his brother. _Too busy to find your treaty – where was the last place you remember having it?_

Then he yanked down his sleeves, flung on his coat, despite the heat outside, and made for the front door, flagging down the next taxi. It pulled up outside Helen Stoner's house in Stoke Moran long before the woman herself could possibly have made the journey by public transport. Sherlock took one look out of the cab window and leaned forward to issue another direction. 'Back to Baker Street, please.'

'What?' John yelped. 'Already? We haven't even got out of the cab.'

'No need. Look at the shop next door.'

John squinted out of the window, read ''Roylett's Exotic Pets'. And?'

Sherlock leaned his head back against the cracked leather. He had tired of lengthy explanations recently, chafing at the need to constantly slow himself to the pace of the people around him. No one understood, not any more. He closed his eyes.

'In the window of the shop you will notice two animals, a large stuffed cheetah and a baboon, which, added to the name of the shop indicates there is a reasonable likelihood they also sell small exotic animals such as venomous spiders, scorpions and snakes. The placement of Miss Stoner's front door in the middle of a terrace of commercial establishments indicates the premises must be above the row of shops, in this case directly above the pet shop. She keeps her doors and windows closed, there is no chimney in this building so whatever is entering her room must be coming in through a vent or along a pipe, which explains the metallic sounds. It must be small and capable of squeezing into tight spaces. Given the colouring she described, the only logical assumption is that a snake has escaped from the pet shop and is most probably seeking out the warmest place in the building, which is either in or underneath her bed.' He opened his eyes again, leaned forward. 'Baker Street please.'

'No, no.' John stopped the cab with a tap on the window. 'She has a venomous snake in her bed and you're going to leave without so much as telling her?' He shook his head in obvious disapproval.

'I don't do missing pets cases.' Sherlock was unmoved.

'You used to.'

'One,' he corrected. 'I did one. Once.' It was a time he looked back on with shame and resentment. 'If you want to go and tell her you've solved the case, be my guest. You could start a new blog: John Watson – pet detective. I'm busy and I have proper clients waiting.'

John opened the door and then stopped, shaking his head. 'You've changed,' he said. 'And I don't like it.'

Sherlock simply slammed the door and the cab accelerated away. He was scraping the bottom of the barrel, client wise, he knew, investigating anything that appeared to be out of the ordinary. After six months in which every other lead had been exhausted he was now reduced to following up fake ghost cases in the hope they might yield a clue. He expelled a long breath, tried to concentrate on the queue of people who would inevitably be waiting for his services back in Baker Street. But with John out of the way his thoughts turned in the same direction they always did.

Irene's flat.

It called to him in a way that nothing else had ever managed – sweet and alluring and very, very dangerous. No matter how hard he tried to get away, it always drew him back. He told himself he'd see a few more potential clients first and then, if it looked like nothing promising was going to come up, he'd go round.

The stopwatch in his head began ticking off a countdown.

Read my book The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer available now on Amazon to download and in hard copy.


	15. Chapter 15

Six months earlier - March

 _She pressed a finger to his lips, a gentle weight in the darkness. 'Don't say it,' she whispered. 'You'll regret it if you do.'_

 _He reached up, latched his fingers around her wrist and brought it up to his mouth, imprinting a kiss onto the smooth white skin. 'I was just going to ask where you were going.'_

 _He was in no mood to argue, sprawled on his back, naked and unselfconscious as his breathing returned to normal and the sweat on his chest began to dry._

 _Irene stretched out on her stomach in parallel, having resisted his every attempt to put his arm around her, her fingertips exploring the lines of his face. She'd traced his cheekbones so many times he thought she might be trying to memorise them._

 _'You mean why was I packing the suitcase? I wasn't really going anywhere. I just thought the situation demanded a little urgency.'_

 _She'd flipped off the bedside light immediately after he'd disengaged and collapsed beside her, and now she padded over to the floor to ceiling windows, pulled back the heavy curtains and revealed the stars. The cool light bathed her shoulders, highlighted the tops of her breasts, the inward sweep of her waist. He was quite emphatically not given to pointless flights of fancy but he thought she was probably the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He decided not to voice the thought. She paced back across the carpet._

 _'I met Elsie Cubitt.' He offered her an outstretched hand, which she took, lacing her fingers through his. 'She told me you'd been living in London for a year. What was the urgency?'_

 _She flung a leg across his hips, straddled him and found his other hand, pinning both to the bed level with his head. Then she bent forward, the fall of her hair blocking out anything else he might have chosen to see, turning his whole world into the landscape of her face. He relaxed, allowed her to hold him down as she covered his skin with systematic kisses, forehead, cheeks, nose. Her tongue followed the curve of his chin in a long, tortuously slow glide down his neck, coming to rest in a few staccato kisses on his collarbones. She tilted her head and followed a different path, licking her way up the side of his throat, leaving a hot trail of moisture that ended behind his ear. She bore down harder on his hands so that he couldn't move, turned her attention to the other side of his neck, the wet sweep of her mouth triggering a chain of shivers that rippled down his back._

 _She returned to her previous position, gazing into his eyes and the half smile on her lips didn't really take the sting from her words. 'I was getting bored. I gave you a year to find me, but that was all – happily ever after isn't really my thing.'_

 _He understood. These were the rules of the game. He could leave when he chose, and so could she – she didn't owe him anything. That just made the fact that the two of them were here together more special._

 _'Nor mine.'_

 _He sat up, disregarded her resistance, pinned their interlinked fingers behind her back and she shuffled closer, bringing her hips into jarring contact with his hardening flesh. He leaned in and captured her lips in a kiss that began as gentle, the careful, controlled movements with which he was experimenting growing into a wilder, more fierce dance of mouth and tongue as she ground her pelvis against him. He released her arms, brought his hands up to her breasts, filling his palms with their softness and weight and she broke the kiss, arched gracefully backwards, exposing her chest for this attention. He sucked her nipple into his mouth, pinching the other with his fingers to mimic the hard suction he was exerting on its twin and she expelled a long, low moan. The heat between her spread legs increased, but he concentrated on exploring the puckered flesh in his mouth, pulling back to tease the taut point with a lapping affection, then squeezing her breast into his mouth and suckling on it hard._

 _The sounds of her panting filled the room, filled his ears, echoed around the newly discovered space inside him. The freedom was intoxicating. She showed him the impact his actions were having on her, so he wanted the bite of her pleasure to be sharp, her climax intense, because he knew she'd want the same for him when their positions were reversed._

 _He broke off, pushed her breasts together in preparation for some complicated piece of erotic manipulation but she placed both hands on his chest, pushed him backwards roughly, then raised her hips and sheathed him inside her._

 _He caught his breath, but she shook her head. 'Don't,' she said. 'Don't.'_

 _He put his thumb between her legs instead. She rode him delicately at first, a precise, controlled rise and fall of body on body which, although pleasant enough, didn't bring the loss of control he was expecting. He increased the tempo of his rubbing, took a firmer hold on her hip._

 _Her breathing became fractured, a red stain swept across her cheeks. Now he surged up to meet her every time she plunged down, arched his hips to power into her roughly, rapidly until her muscles contracted around him and a stream of filth poured from her mouth – instructions, descriptions, explicit progress reports._

 _But he liked it better when her words dried up and all she could do was gasp._

 _Then the gasping stopped and there was a moment of complete silence, broken only by the wet friction of his hand between her legs. She came with cry and a shudder and she wasn't finished when he heaved her off him, positioned her limp form in a kneeling position on the bed, edged apart her knees with his legs and entered her again from behind. This time with his freedom of movement restored he didn't hold back, putting both hands on her hips and driving the penetration into her, deep and hard. Her head jerked upwards and she cried his name, which he took as encouragement. For the second time he lost himself, gave his mind over to the demands of his body and the clamour in his heart, leaving his mark in the white grip of his fingers on her skin, in the headlong, unco-ordinated, uncontrolled passion with which he took her._

 _Deep down he was aware that this wasn't making love, or any of the soft euphemisms other people used for sex. This time he wanted to be indelicate, wanted her to know she'd been had. He held nothing back, every grunt, cry, expletive he wanted to utter came rushing out of his mouth, every shudder, every flicker, every shade of pleasure that he felt, he showed._

 _He came into her with force and a feeling of total and absolute release that went beyond the physical. When he collapsed on top of her and she fell forward onto the mattress in her turn he rolled her on her side, curled himself against her back and held her._

 _She whispered one syllable 'Think.'_

 _But he was too far gone to wonder what she meant. He had never felt this close to anyone, never allowed himself the license to expose his deepest self, the emotions suppressed so long he hadn't even been sure they still existed._

 _But here, in this one place, he could give voice to the sudden, powerful feelings, knowing that tomorrow morning they'd go back in their box and he'd carry on with his life as normal. This was the gift she'd given him, this strong, vulnerable, intelligent, flawed woman._

 _Simply, quietly, he said. 'I love you.'_

 _For more comedy smut romance, or whatever this is, read The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer on Amazon. The Car Crash Bride is out in two weeks._


	16. Chapter 16

September

Sherlock pointed at the emaciated, grey tinged, brittle woman in the consulting chair. 'You have five minutes,' he said. 'Go.' He checked his watch.

'My son is missing.'

'Go to the police.'

'Is that your best idea? I thought you were supposed to be clever.'

He shrugged. 'I don't find missing people.' He followed up the shrug with a sour glance at John. 'Or missing pets. And I don't find missing keys either.' He followed up the sour glance with a sarcastic text to his brother. _Have you looked for the treaty in the pocket of your other trousers? Down the back of the settee? In your coat pocket?_

Fluffing the keys a few times, he longed for a cigarette to soothe the tremor in his fingers, a hangover from last night's visit to Irene's flat. It always left him on edge the following day. He glanced up at the client, who was glaring at his distraction from across the room, and where John would once have covered for him, his friend was now too angry to bother.

'Well?' he demanded. 'Carry on then. Tick tock.'

'I came to you because the police won't help me. My lad, Brandon his name is, has been missing for six weeks and the police tell me they're out of resources already and have closed the investigation. They never liked him. They were always following him around the estate, asking him questions when he'd done nothing wrong. He'd got in with a bad crowd but that didn't make him a bad person, he deserves their help as much as anyone. I've already complained about it. If he's never found it'll be police incompetence. And discrimination. I'll want compensation.'

Sherlock leaned forward, surveyed the woman rapidly, wondering if he could ask for one of the cigarettes in her handbag before sending her on her way. 'Look, Mrs…. I can't remember what your name is but it hardly matters. Your son, as I'm sure you're aware, was a low-level drug dealer. Of course, he never told you where all the sudden cash was coming from, you just took it and enjoyed spending it. Your clothes, shoes bag – all expensive but have all seen better days. You gave up your job as a secretary, probably wise with the repetitive strain injury, and decided to live off your son's money instead. But it ran out a while ago didn't it? In fact, he started borrowing from you, and now you're in so much debt your only hope is finding your son or winning the lottery. You've spent your last change on scratchcards on the way over here, you've had to rub the top off the numbers with your fingernails because you literally don't have a penny to your name. This trip was a waste of time. I don't do missing persons and even if I did you and I both know your son is never coming back.'

She fumbled in her bag, came up with a cigarette and a lighter and Sherlock was off his feet in a heartbeat, twitching the nicotine out of her hands faster than John could open his mouth to object to the smoking.

'He is coming back,' she snapped. 'You're as lazy and as arrogant as the police are. If there was a nice fat cheque in it for you you'd be straight out of the door trying to find him but we're not good enough for you, are we? If he was a pretty young white girl you'd be bending over backwards to help me, but because he's… '

Sherlock cut her off. 'Your son is dead. He's bloated and rolling along the bottom of a canal somewhere, or he's in the basement of a squat with his face blown off. Don't come here and expect me to empathise with you because I won't. Now leave.' He was aware that he was shouting because of the sudden silence in the room when he stopped and the look of shock on John's face. He took a steadying breath. 'Or he's gone to a yoga retreat in Dorking. Either way I can't help you.'

He retreated to his bedroom, turned the key in the lock and lit the cigarette he still had secreted in his pocket – that interview hadn't been a total loss after all. Then he took out his phone and dialled the number of his next appointment. The screen flashed up instantly with the avatar of his contact – a tiny purple horseman carrying a bow and arrow. The call connected and a high pitched female voice, distorted by a voice synthesizer so that it might have been a baritone male speaking said, 'Hello, Mr Holmes.'

Sherlock pointed at the blank, anonymous, unmoving cartoon in front of him. 'You have five minutes,' he said. 'Go.' He checked his watch.

'Well, I might be able to spare you five minutes,' said the disguised source on the other end. 'But I'm really busy so if I drop out I'll have to call you back. How about I fill in some of the details I gave you in my email?'

This was the sort of interview Sherlock wished would happen more often – a disembodied voice reciting facts that needed to be analysed, with none of that messy emotion getting in the way.

'Perfect. You talk, I'll listen.'

'I can't go to the police with this for obvious reasons, but there's something not quite right about it. I run a social media company specialising in online brand promotion – we're called The Violet Hunter and most of the time my clients are businesses wanting to improve their website presence. So, for example if a client has a new product to promote I can use the Twitterbot network I run, and thousands of captive accounts will tweet hashtags, pictures, or whatever I choose until that product is trending and real people start retweeting. On Facebook I have accounts that can plug fake news stories for long enough that the algorithms pick it up and it becomes real news. I can have a website get to the top of Google search in about two hours, place products onto Instagram or Pinterest at will, boost a profile on LinkedIn. You get the general idea.'

'You influence the internet.'

'Most of the time I am the internet. Everything you see, everything you hear, most of the thoughts in your head are put there by people like me manipulating what information you have access to. There's very little out there that is genuinely real these days.'

'And why did you get in touch with me?'

'I was approached by an old client of mine – Mr Jephro Rucastle. He runs a consulting business from home called The . He told me his daughter Alice was being stalked on social media and needed to take a break for a while, but wanted to keep her accounts running so no one would know she was away on holiday. It was an unusual request, but he offered to pay, extremely well, so I agreed to the contract and for the last month or so I've been pretending to be Alice Rucastle.'

'And what does running a false online identity entail?' Sherlock asked, out of genuine curiosity rather than any sense of judgement.

'Content creation mostly. I post regular updates, upload video from places she might have been, post snaps of food she might have eaten. I message her friends and pretend to be her, and I've got a pretty good voice recognition programme that I use to make phone calls that can mimic the sound of the target's voice almost exactly. It's a very personalised service – I charge a lot.'

Sherlock had forgotten to check his watch, remembered that this was supposed to be a potential case. 'And you think something might have happened to Alice Rucastle?'

'Yes. Her father pays me, but I had to hack in to all his daughter's accounts – he didn't have any of her passwords, which seemed odd, if she'd consented to having her profile taken over. Since the beginning one of her friends – a young man - has been trying to contact her and he's become more and more insistent on arranging a face to face meeting. I've told him – Alice has told him – that she's too busy, or she's ill or she doesn't want to see him, but yesterday he came out and said he didn't believe that I was really Alice and said he was going around to the Copper Beeches to find her.'

'And you think she's in danger?'

Even through the distortion the voice on the other end of the phone sounded shifty. 'I shouldn't get involved, it's very unprofessional, but I'm afraid my heart is ruling my head this time. I like Alice. I like her friends. I don't want anything bad to happen to her. So, if she's being held against her will because her family doesn't want her to meet her boyfriend, if this is heading towards an honour killing, or something like it, then I want it stopped. I don't do real life so I came to you.'

'Alice Rucastle is a missing person, then?' Sherlock asked suspiciously.

A picture flashed up on the screen, a young woman with long, glossy dark hair, perfectly moulded features and sparking, intelligent blue eyes. Sherlock's heart lurched.

'I looked you up, Mr Holmes,' the voice said. 'There's a lot of interest in you on the dark web, not all of it benign. I'm fairly convinced you'll help my Alice.'

'Address?' Sherlock's voice was a whisper. The resemblance was uncanny, although he knew it couldn't possibly be her. A text message beeped and the video call disconnected.

John was waiting in the hall, his arms folded, a grim expression marring his face. 'I sent all the other clients away,' he grated. 'You and I need to talk.'

'I have a case, John,' he hesitated momentarily but his friend made no move to follow so he left the building alone, en route for a train to Winchester, taking care to keep his sleeves rolled down and his jacket in place until he'd left the building.

But it was all over by the time he got there. The Copper Beeches was a model Georgian mansion, although the white render was hidden beneath a layer of green mould and an ugly extension had been added to one side. He asked the cab to wait, approached the open front door and was met inside by a woman holding a bloody rag.

'Police?' she asked, without stopping, heading back into the sitting room to tend to a sprawled figure lying prone on the settee. A bowl had been placed on the floor and even from this distance Sherlock could see that the water inside it was red.

He shook his head. 'I'm looking for Alice.'

'Well, I hope you don't find her- I hope she's a very long way from here by now, and good luck to her.'

'And you are?'

'Mrs Toller. Live in help, cleaner, cook and part time gaoler. This lovely gentleman here,' she indicated the unconscious figure with a wave. 'Is my employer Jephro Rucastle, who was unfortunately injured when his daughter was rescued by her fiancé not half an hour ago. I'm not going to call an ambulance until I'm sure they're so far away they can't be caught. Do you know he was keeping her prisoner in one of the rooms on the second floor? Told me it was his dark room, something to do with photography and that I wasn't to go in. I didn't, until Alice's young man knocked on the door this morning when Mr Rucastle was out, and asked me when she was getting back from her holiday. Mr Rucastle had said she was away with her boyfriend somewhere. But there was the boyfriend standing in front of me and I knew something wasn't right so we searched the house and there she was. A bit pale, poor thing, but he hadn't hurt her. Not yet anyway. He went berserk when he got home though, went for her with a knife, which he then was very unfortunately stabbed with. I don't remember how it happened. That's what I'll tell the police anyway. How do you know Alice?'

Sherlock shrugged. 'Social media. I thought she might be in trouble but I see she's safe.' He nodded into the living room. 'He looks like he's losing a lot of blood.'

'It does, doesn't it. What a shame. Very nice to meet you anyway. See yourself out.'

Sherlock did as he was asked, the familiar sense of disappointment settling on his shoulders, nausea twisting his stomach. With John waiting back at Baker Street he decided not to go home, but to head directly for Irene's flat on his arrival in London, and delay the lecture for another day.

The Car Crash Bride is out on Amazon to pre-order here: . /Crash-Bride-Sally-Anne-Palmer-ebook/dp/B071RJ8KYJ and in print here: .


	17. Chapter 17

March

 _He awoke the next morning to a faint smell of sweat and something crusty under his right cheek. The curtains were still open, the weak sun approaching its paltry zenith and casting vague distracted beams over the rooftops of London. A slight frost silvered the slates outside. He shifted, stretched, aware of his mind sliding smoothly up a gear, compensating for an evening of laziness with a swift analysis of external stimuli._

 _Irene was no longer in the flat. The sheets beside him were cold, the condensation on the inside of the window revealing that she'd had a shower but the room was tidy, his discarded clothes piled neatly on a chair so she'd been awake for some time. He vaguely remembered closing his eyes, lulled by the warmth of her body, clutched to him like a particularly erotic hot water bottle. He didn't remember arranging when or even if, he would see her again, but that wasn't concerning since another day had dawned and someone, somewhere would have work for him to do. It was time to move on._

 _He sprang out of bed, then winced slightly at the soreness in his back and strode into the ensuite bathroom to examine himself in the mirror. He'd looked better, his hair hardened into sweat stiffened curls and he'd certainly smelled better, but there weren't any compromising marks on his skin, at least, not in any places that John would be likely to notice._

 _The majority of the bathroom cupboards were empty, but he made use of the purloined hotel miniatures left in the shower to sluice away the worst evidence of last night's activities and wandered back into the bedroom, drying his hair on the only towel. Half hoping for a clean, perfectly fitting new suit to be hanging in the wardrobe he systematically went through every cupboard, failing to locate so much as a single shirt._

 _Padding into the corridor with the towel around his shoulders he went in search of the second bedroom, the one that deductive reasoning stated should be full of clothes. There was a bedroom, which disappointingly had a bed in it, but the room itself smelled stale and dust motes swirled in the air at the disturbance of his feet on the carpet. Behind the next door was a walk-in wardrobe, which went some way to restoring his self-confidence although he found the clothes in it slightly pedestrian, too mundane for the image of her he carried around in his head._

 _He banished that thought with a wave, checking his memory to confirm that she still appeared there naked, although now he could choose to view her kneeling at his feet, spread-eagled beneath him calling his name and on top of him, head thrown back in ecstasy. He catalogued and filed the memories for future reference, dressed and went to the kitchen in search of breakfast._

 _He found tea, seven different kinds, no sugar and only half a pint of milk in the fridge. There was nothing else so he helped himself to a cup and went back to the bedroom to check he'd picked up any stray possessions. He couldn't locate his mobile, suspected it was still in his coat pocket. The etiquette of morning after bed sheet changing concerned him briefly before he reasoned that using her washing machine was straying too far in the direction of domesticity. He didn't want her to find him ordinary, after all. He slung on his coat, slipped on his shoes and trotted downstairs to the front door._

 _For one brief, electric moment he relived everything that had happened since he had crossed this threshold only a few hours ago, and then shut it all away inside the box marked 'emotions' and slammed the door behind him._

 _Striding off down the alley with a swing in his step he didn't swear at the burly man who jostled him before he'd gone two paces and nor did he raise a sarcastic eyebrow at the mothers pushing prams three abreast down a London street. He didn't mind the light drizzle, or the heavy shower it turned into and if he wasn't exactly whistling when he bounded up the front stairs of Baker Street he was at least thinking about it._

 _John was busy playing with his daughter in the living room. 'Oh, look Rosie, look who's finally bothered to come home. It's your uncle Sherlock,' he crooned to the little girl. 'He's been out all night. What a naughty boy he is. What a very, very naughty boy – I bet he's had a proper telling off. Maybe he's had his bottom smacked.'_

 _'Inappropriate as well as inaccurate,' Sherlock called, marching straight into the bedroom in search of clean clothes. Hearing John approaching down the corridor he barely had time to fling off his jacket and retrieve a pristine shirt from the wardrobe before John was hanging around the half open door._

 _'Shall we get him to tell us what happened last night, Rosie? Shall we ask him for a blow by blow account?'_

 _Sherlock ignored the banter, focusing on buttons and work. 'Do we have any actual clients today or am I on crèche duty again?'_

 _'There was a client - a little old lady who came around earlier to see you. I said you were tied up.'_

 _'And where is she now?'_

 _'Downstairs in the café, I think the lounge was a bit too noisy for her. Rosie was busy playing with your violin at the time.'_

 _'Then let's go and see her, shall we?'_

 _'You don't want her to come up?'_

 _'We'll go down.'_

 _'Then she won't sit in the chair.'_

 _'I'll waive the chair, on this occasion. I'm also starving.'_

 _'Didn't Irene feed you this morning? I mean proper food from a plate, not something you had to lick off her shoes?'_

 _'She wasn't there when I woke up.'_

 _'Oh. And are you seeing her later?'_

 _Sherlock shrugged, led the way downstairs and ordered the biggest plate of fried breakfast the café could provide. He let John start the interrogation while he ate._

 _This client was tiny, a fragile, ancient old woman who looked like she was made from bones and knitting. He pushed the tea he'd ordered but not yet touched in front of her._

 _'Perdita hasn't come home,' she quavered, after taking a grateful sip. 'I last saw her on Friday night at about nine o'clock when she went out for a walk and I haven't seen her since. She knows she has to be back before I go to bed at eleven but she never came in. I waited and waited and then I went out looking but no one's seen hide nor hair of her.'_

 _Sherlock nodded at John to reply, his mouth full of sausage._

 _'And how old is Perdita, Mrs Green?'_

 _'Eleven.'_

 _John straightened in his chair. 'Then you must go to the police. Immediately. You need the police out looking, not us.'_

 _Her face fell, her eyes becoming cracks in a pavement of wrinkles. 'I did. They wouldn't help me. A nice inspector told me to ask you.' A single tear began the complicated process of rolling down her cheek._

 _John inhaled sharply. 'Then we'd better get a description, what does Perdita look like?'_

 _Sherlock swallowed. 'Perdita is a cat.'_

 _John turned to him, raised an eyebrow._

 _'The holes in the jumper for a start, scratches on the wrists. And there's the smell. How many cats do you have Mrs Green?'_

 _'Forty-three. But they're all my babies.'_

 _Sherlock laid down his knife and fork, folded his arms. 'And you've been widowed for some time, haven't you? But that isn't why you keep the cats. You were bereaved long before your husband died.'_

 _She reached for the old-fashioned keepsake locket around her neck which he'd noticed was shiny with constant handling. 'My son. Barnaby. He died when he was only four.'_

 _Sherlock nodded. 'And what would you like me to do – put up some posters, ask around your neighbours, that sort of thing?'_

 _She wiped a tear from her eye._

 _He took a final bite of toast, pushed back his chair. 'Fine. I can do that.'_

 _John stared at him wide-eyed. 'You can do that? Take on the case of Perdita the missing cat?'_

 _Sherlock fixed him with a hard stare. 'Absolutely. You take Rosie to the park or something.'_

 _John was watching him as if he belonged at the wrong end of a microscope. 'Oh. Yes. I'll see you later then.' He picked up his daughter, who had a sausage in one fist and a handful of beans in the other, and made to leave, then stopped. 'Just so we're clear – you don't want me to write about this one, do you?'_

 _Sherlock glowered at him._

 _John took a few steps away, and then returned to the table, this time fishing for something in his changing bag. He dropped a tube of antiseptic cream next to Sherlock's plate. 'For the scratches on your back,' he said. 'Ask her to be more careful with you next time.'_

 _Sherlock turned back to his client and spent the next few hours searching for a cat, finding a cat, uniting a cat with its tearful owner and then looking at the tearful owner's yellowing photographs of her lost son. All the while his mind raced away in the background, remorseless, unstoppable, making up for being side-lined so badly the night before. She'd told him to think, and now he wasn't distracted by quite so much feeling, he found the conclusion of those thoughts unsettling._

 _And John's words niggled at him. Where had she gone? And how did he know there would ever be a next time?_

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	18. Chapter 18

September

Sherlock pointed at the fleshy, long nosed, supercilious man in the consulting chair. 'You have five minutes,' he said. 'Go.' He checked his watch.

'Oh, for heaven's sake Sherlock, I'm not playing your silly games again. I'll say what I have to say and then you'll ask some pointless and inane questions and then you'll go and do what I want you to do anyway,' answered Mycroft.

'Don't bet on it.' Sherlock fumbled in his pocket for the already half empty packet of cigarettes, lit one and watched as John and Mycroft exchanged a glance.

'Tell us about the missing treaty then,' John requested, with clearly pre-planned precision.

It wasn't enough that John was worried about him, Sherlock decided, but he had to worry in chorus, since practically everyone they knew had started giving Sherlock sidelong looks and talking in serious voices. Sherlock couldn't have cared less about Mycroft's missing keys or whatever it was, right now he only cared about how many more hours would have to pass before he could go back to Irene's flat.

Mycroft settled himself comfortably in the uncomfortable chair. 'The current Foreign Secretary was entrusted with an important document, which was, unfortunately, rather above his pay grade. He kept this document in his official box in his office from where it disappeared around two months ago. At precisely the same time, the Foreign Secretary's new mistress also disappeared and I can only assume that two such mysterious disappearances in such a short space of time are connected. I would like you to find the document and the mistress, if you aren't too busy locating pet cats.'

John looked over at him encouragingly. 'I imagine it's very important we know what's in the document, isn't it Sherlock? Especially since it seems to be of national importance.'

Sherlock waved a hand. 'Tell me about the woman.'

Mycroft smiled his insipid, thin lipped smile. 'The document is a draft treaty describing exactly what support NATO and its allies in the West will provide the Ukrainian government in their fight against the Moscow over the Crimea. It sets out the movement of troops, air support, armament locations – everything the Russians need to plan a counter strike. But more to the point it gives them ammunition in their propaganda war. The Russian state is engaged in a campaign of solidifying its power base and unifying the opinion of its populous against the West. It is not too much to imagine that widespread publication of the missing treaty might trigger a strike by the Russian state, to which we would be forced to respond.'

John said, a little too quickly, 'It could be all out war?'

Mycroft inclined his head.

Sherlock looked from one to the other, wondering when they'd found the time to rehearse this. The gambit was obvious – they hoped to distract him from his current troubles by giving him a stick to fetch, but he wasn't quite that stupid. Mycroft's eyes glittered at him and he recalled that his brother was only ever concerned with the cover story.

'Tell me about the woman,' he repeated, increasingly sure that the missing treaty was only a blind, a camouflage for the real problem he was expected to solve.

John muttered, 'He's obsessed with The Woman.'

Sherlock heard the capitalisation in the complaint. He fixed his concentration on his brother.

'Slim, attractive. Intelligent, by all accounts.' Mycroft shrugged.

'Fair or dark?'

'Brunette, or so I'm told.'

'Eye colour?'

'Does it matter?'

'It does if you want me to find her. Do you have a picture?'

'No. She appears to have been extremely adept at not keeping records.'

The massive kick of adrenalin caught him by surprise and Sherlock inhaled sharply on his cigarette to conceal it. 'What's her name?'

Mycroft raised a sardonic eyebrow. 'Hope.'

Sherlock stubbed out the glowing ember, shoved his hands in his pockets to disguise how much they were shaking.

'Hope Trelawney,' Mycroft continued. 'I have an address but I'm afraid her flat is rather a mess. She may be dead. Or she may simply have faked her death, I can't be sure.' The stare Mycroft was giving him was penetrating, to the extent that it could have cut through steel given half a chance.

'How could anyone fake a death convincingly enough to fool you?' he asked, to test whether Mycroft was simply theorising or working on confirmed information. He flicked a glance at John, reading in the haggard expression, the unironed clothes, the bitten fingernails how likely it was that his friend was so concerned he had revealed the continued existence of Irene Adler.

'They couldn't,' stated his brother. 'I would find out in the end.'

'Fine,' he shrugged. 'Leave me the address and I'll sort out your national emergency. Although if it's been going on for two months, I doubt it's really all that urgent.'

He retreated to the window and picked up his violin, watching in the reflection as his best friend and his brother exchanged a glance. Mycroft dropped a piece of paper into John's lap and exited the room without another word. Sherlock played loudly and not very well for long enough that John stopped hanging around behind him and went to make tea, and then he picked up the paper from where it lay on the desk and looked at the address. It meant nothing to him, unconnected to his current investigations in any way, but he still felt that familiar thrill of the chase, the same steely anger that now accompanied it.

John came huffing after him down the street as he jumped into a cab, nearly fast enough to elude his constant shadow. 'Godolphin Street,' Sherlock ordered, whipping out his phone from his coat pocket and pretending to be engrossed in it so John couldn't start on the lecture he'd been threatening since yesterday.

Hope Trelawney had occupied a bedsit in Westminster, just a high heeled sashay from the Houses of Parliament and she had made herself at home in the rented apartment. The kitchen was still well stocked with food, the clothes in the wardrobe were relatively new and all for the same sized person and the odd magazine cast around on the side tables had been recently purchased. The most distinguishing feature of the flat was a very large round rug in the middle of the floor in a practical deep blue, which had been darkened to purple in the middle by the introduction of a large and vivid blood stain. So much blood had been spilled onto the carpet it was impossible to believe that its owner could possibly have got up and walked away afterwards.

Sherlock said to the bored constable standing by the front door. 'Has this been moved?'

'No sir. I've been stood here every day for two months and I can honestly tell you that the rug hasn't moved once. The cleaning lady comes once a week and that's as exciting as it gets.'

'And there has been someone here guarding the flat every night and day since the crime scene was discovered?'

'Every day and night. Nobody could leave until you'd bothered to turn up and have a look.'

'What about forensics – whose is the blood?'

'Unidentified. No match on the DNA database, so it might belong to the woman who lived here or it might not.'

'Alright.' He took a step back and began assessing the flat.

John sidled up next to him. 'Just like old times?'

Sherlock resented the hope in his voice; without John hanging around, these last few months would have been considerably easier. 'Not really. I used to be able to trust you. I knew whose side you were on. Did you tell my brother that she's alive?' He couldn't bring himself to say Irene's name out loud.

'No. But I should. He's worried about you. I'm worried about you. The only person who isn't worried about you is bloody Irene. Look at the state of you, Sherlock. You're smoking again, you don't eat, you look terrible – and I know you've probably been up all night but whatever it is you're letting her do to you it needs to stop. You need a break. You've lost interest in anything that isn't Irene Adler. You treat your clients like they're irrelevant, like they're only there to give you something to do and you don't seem to care whether you solve each case or not. And the ones you do investigate make no sense. The green ghost one – what was that about? I don't like who you're turning into. This isn't how I thought Sherlock Holmes in love would be.'

Sherlock snorted. 'I've never done love. Or emotional context. '

'No,' said John. 'Maybe not. Because whatever it is you have with Irene it isn't love.'

In frustration Sherlock kicked at the rug. And then kicked it again little more carefully, before squatting down and pulling up the side to get a better look underneath.

'I thought you said this hadn't been moved?' He glanced at the constable, accusatory.

'Not even by forensics.'

'Then here's the answer.' He pointed. 'A second stain. If this rug had been in the same place since whoever it was died on it, the blood would have soaked all the way through to the floor, but the stain underneath is clearly in a different place, so someone moved the rug. Let's see if we can find out why.'

He heaved the crusted carpet to one side, lay flat on the floor and examined the painted floorboards critically, finally pressing a finger to one which appeared out of line with the others. The board flipped up easily, assisted by a spring loaded mechanism underneath and from inside the hole it revealed, Sherlock took a USB stick.

'That was easy,' John remarked. 'I'm surprised no one thought to look there before. So where is Hope Trelawney?'

Sherlock ignored him, taking out his phone and banging out a text to his brother _. Found your treaty, bringing it round._

'Where are you going?' John called after him as he made for the exit.

'To find the woman.' He didn't bother to look round.

'Which one?'

But Sherlock was already out of the door and working out the most direct way back to Irene's flat. Mycroft could wait for his not so precious documents, if he'd waited two months already. Whoever Hope Trelawney was, she was either a) dead, in which case Sherlock wasn't interested, or b) not Irene, in which case Sherlock also wasn't interested.

As he turned into the alley that led to Irene's flat he was rudely, and unnecessarily barged against the wall by a burly man in a dark coat who he vaguely recognised, but thought no more about once the encounter was over since the pleasures he sought were now so close.

As soon as he'd gained the safety of the flat and finished climbing the stairs there was a knock at the front door. The knock was followed almost immediately by the unmistakeable sound of someone breaking it down.

My books The Postman's Daughter and The Car Crash Bride by Sally Anne Palmer are available now on Amazon, Kobo and other retailers.


	19. Chapter 19

March

 _He staked out the flat for just long enough to be sure the lights hadn't been switched on with the approach of dusk and then unlocked the door he'd closed only a few hours before. The flat was cold and dark and the staircase echoed to his footsteps so he flipped the lightswitch and then had a good look for wires which would indicate CCTV or another security system connected to the entrance. There was no evidence of any such technology, only a heavy-duty mortice lock in need of oil, which had caused the sounds he'd noticed on his first visit. He found it difficult to believe she would be so lax about her security and he added that to the pile of conclusions he needed to test._

 _He retraced his steps, starting in the bedroom where no one had stripped the bed or washed the sheets and the scent of her perfume still lingered in the air. But there was no trace of a perfume bottle in any of the cupboards, and no other toiletries in the bathroom. She couldn't possibly have fitted all her cosmetics in that tiny suitcase, which meant that she must keep them elsewhere. That itself suggested that the flat was not her home._

 _He hoped that the clothes in the walk-in wardrobe would disprove his theory, and although they passed a cursory check, when he went through them more carefully the alarm signals his brain had been trying to send him the first time round now sounded loud and clear. Many of the dresses, skirts and trousers were of different, mismatching sizes, some too big to fit her; all were high street brands and all showed signs of wear. Pawing through the garments he finally found what he was hoping wouldn't be there – a sales label from a charity shop. Irene hadn't ever worn these clothes, they were a bulk buy designed to fill the cupboards and give the impression of residence, should anyone check._

 _He half ran into the living room, pulled a book at random off the shelf. Inside was an old library stamp. He checked another, and another – all bore the same stamp; all were from the same library. This was a job lot of surplus stock bought at auction somewhere to fill holes on the shelves and create the illusion of domesticity. A careful look at the periodicals he'd noticed before revealed that these were all new, set forward on the shelf and bound in bright red, while the spines of all other books around them had been carefully selected as a uniform beige. Someone had placed these books to catch the eye, and, given that they were similar to the titles he had in his own flat, the conclusion he drew was that these books had been arranged to catch his eye alone. Irene did not live in this flat, but she'd wanted it to appear to him, specifically him, as if she did._

 _The kitchen cupboards presented a slight challenge – she'd spent enough time here to need plenty of tea, which she'd drunk while sitting at the dining table, because the ring marks he'd noticed on it before suggested frequent use. His mind provided the answer to that one readily enough – he'd been sent the key to this flat a year ago, could have cracked the code and come around at any time and she needed to be here when he arrived. That meant surveillance. Someone had been watching him, must have been watching him for a whole year, around the clock, ready to alert Miss Adler whenever it looked like he was heading in her direction. Every ring mark on this table, every cup of tea probably represented an occasion she'd sat here and waited for him._

 _This whole flat was a trap, a lure, a very specialised bait meant only for him._

 _He took out his phone, searched for the final confirmation. According to the internet, the flat had last been sold twenty years ago, long before she was old enough to apply for a mortgage, which meant it had been leased out ever since._

 _This wasn't her home, she didn't live here, but she wanted it to look like she did. For a very short period._

 _The illusion only needed to last for a single night, because it would have been obvious in the cold light of day, as it was obvious to him right now, that he had been deceived._

 _Therefore, the aim of the trap, its only purpose, was to trick him into bed. He dropped the phone back onto the table with a clatter, gritted his teeth. That was all she had wanted, to sleep with him once, and in so doing demean, humiliate and embarrass him as much as possible. She had never loved him. She had played a very long, and a very expensive game with one purpose – to ensure he knew when he was beaten. This was revenge for the way he had left her at the mercy of her enemies, by solving her phone and exposing her secrets to his brother. This was payback._

 _He had fallen in love with her. Worse, he had told her so._

 _She hadn't wanted his love, hadn't returned it, and as soon as he'd admitted it she never wanted to see him again. Wherever she was now, she must be laughing at him._

 _His cheeks flushed at the very thought of Mycroft finding out, the derision and the pity which would inevitably follow. John's empathy would be even harder to bear. They could never know what a fool he was. Instead he could have to conceal it, and he would never, ever allow his feelings to cloud his judgement again._

 _He pushed at the phone with a fingernail. But she couldn't go unpunished. Every adversary should be brought to justice, no matter how long it took. At some point, she would make a mistake and he'd watch her fall. He would make her beg for mercy and this time he wouldn't come running like her pet dog, gagging to save her._

 _He tapped out a careful, considered message on his phone, sure she'd be waiting for his call._

Find me _, he wrote. An order this time, a threat._ Before I find you _._

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Kate Perkins can't remember how she came to be in a deadly car crash with her cheating ex-boyfriend. And why had they gotten engaged? As Kate struggles to recover her memory, she is confronted by her ex's older brother, Edward, a man with whom she has a complicated, and still unresolved, past.

Threats start coming. Someone doesn't want her to remember that night. And will stop at nothing to prevent her from learning the secret of her ex's death. Will she be able to uncover the truth before it's too late?

If anyone would like to read it I am giving away free electronic copies in exchange for a review on Amazon. Email me on sallyannepalmerauthor if you're interested.


	20. Chapter 20

There was nowhere to hide. The flat had only one entry point and was high enough up that jumping out of the window wasn't going to be an option. Besides, Sherlock had always preferred a rather more refined form of suicide. The best he could hope for was that he was about to be burgled, although when the burglars noticed there was nothing to steal the best he could probably hope for was a shorter stay in hospital. He picked his way between the fallen mounds of library books, huddled on the sofa and prepared for disaster.

John strode into the living room full of concealed violence, his hands clenched at his sides, a determined set to his chin. 'Where is she?' he demanded. 'I want a word.'

Sherlock winced at his own stupidity. He'd allowed himself to be followed directly here from Hope Trelawney's residence without having taken even the most basic precautions. Belatedly, he checked that his cuffs were still fastened, and then realised that it was too late, even for this.

John gave him a second to answer and then marched into the bedrooms, and Sherlock could hear wardrobe doors being opened and drawers being searched. John had more trouble with the walk-in wardrobe, the door sticking on the clothes still scattered on the ground where he'd flung them on that first terrible evening of discovery. There was a rather more considered search going on in the hall, the distinctive noise of many heavy boots spreading out into the other rooms and then concentrating in the study. Then the boots retreated leaving a solitary pair of dress shoes to make their stately procession down the corridor.

Mycroft entered the room, with John on his right shoulder. Sherlock dropped his head, examining the familiar stains on the carpet. He had no defence – or rather, he did have a defence but it was unpalatable so instead he checked that the fortifications he'd built around himself over the last six months were still intact and awaited the attack.

'Where is she?' John dropped automatically into the chair on the left-hand side of the fireplace.

'She?' Mycroft's tone was incredulous. He swept a hand round, indicating the paper littering the floor, tumbled from drawers or ripped from books, the pictures hanging askew from the walls, the open kitchen cupboards, scattered pans and utensils, the still unwashed sheets and the dirty bathroom. 'There's no woman here. His bedroom at home always looked exactly the same.'

He brushed the seat on the right-hand side of the fireplace with a handkerchief, perched on it with a disgusted expression.

'There is,' John insisted. 'She lives here. Irene Adler. He's been sleeping with her for the last six months.'

Mycroft sniffed. 'He hasn't been sleeping with anyone.'

There was both scorn and certainty in his tone, both of which Sherlock found irritating.

'Yes, he has. She's not dead. He saved her in Karachi. I only found out just after Mary died but they've been in touch for years, he admitted it to me himself. And then she sent him a puzzle box with a key inside and he came around here to find her. He hasn't been the same since. That's why I called you this morning. I finally got the chance to follow him so I could have a word with his girlfriend.'

Mycroft turned his disdain on John. 'Sherlock Holmes does not have a 'girlfriend'.'

It only made John more stubborn. 'Yes, he does.' He nodded at Sherlock. 'Tell him.'

John deployed the same steady gaze he'd use on anyone sitting in the consulting chair and Sherlock recognised that meant his friend wouldn't give up. He was going to have to choose whom to answer.

'I am not in a relationship,' he demurred, noting John's scowl.

Mycroft jumped in before he could finish. 'I'm afraid my brother has gone to some lengths to conceal himself this time, Doctor Watson. Look at him. Observe him carefully. Do you see the dark rings around his eyes, the sweat on his forehead, the unwashed hair and the unironed shirt? Have you noted how he appears to have become disenchanted with what he laughingly calls work and has distanced himself even from you? More to the point, have you wondered why he's keeping his coat on, and his sleeves down over his wrists although the weather has been unseasonably hot? My brother has no significant other, no carefully hidden woman, or man, lurking about in his private life. Love is a chemical defect, as someone once told me, and Sherlock has always been more interested in the chemicals. Aren't you hot, by the way?' Mycroft gestured vaguely. 'Take that coat off so we can see what a mess you've made of yourself this time.'

John frowned. 'I don't really follow what you're saying.'

'Didn't you look in the study on your way past? There's an entire laboratory in there cooking up whatever illegal drug my brother has decided to overdose on this week. He's not in love, Doctor Watson, although effects look very similar - he's high. This entire flat, this whole deception is designed to fool you into thinking he's sneaking off somewhere for a clandestine liaison, when actually he's the same sad little junkie he's always been.'

John's tone was dangerous. 'Tell me that isn't true.'

Sherlock straightened, conscious of the fine line he had to walk. 'I am not in a relationship. There was a brief liaison with the woman to whom John refers after I rescued her but it concluded some time ago. I have continued to use this residence for the purpose that Mycroft describes. That is my final word.' He sat back. Both subjects were too gross an invasion of privacy to be discussed any further.

'You did what?' Mycroft's voice held a note of horror.

'You did what?' John's voice chimed in harmony.

They stared at each other.

'The woman I can understand,' shrugged John. 'It's the drugs I'm more concerned about.'

'I'm familiar with drug addiction – I'll shut him up in rehabilitation for the next twenty years if I have to. It's the woman that doesn't make sense.'

'Would you prefer it was a man?'

'I'd prefer he was involved with a comatose rabbit – anything, as long as it kept him away from her.' He turned to his brother. 'What were you thinking?'

John chipped in. 'I have the same question. What were you thinking? What could possibly have happened that was so bad it drove you back to drugs? When you came back after that first time you were so ...happy. I'll say happy, for want of a better word. You were nice to that old lady who'd lost her cat. You didn't yell at me for letting Rosie play with your violin.'

John's train of thought was slowing now, Sherlock could see it approaching its destination, but Mycroft was examining him with forensic detachment, like he was being dissected glance by glance.

John continued. 'We went for breakfast in the café because she wasn't there when you woke up. I asked you when you were seeing her again and you wouldn't tell me. Because you didn't know?' John rubbed his hands across his face. 'It was a one night stand, wasn't it? You loved her, don't look like that, I know you did, and you thought it was mutual – she was propositioning you, not the other way around. But it wasn't. Or maybe something went wrong that night - don't tell me what, I'm not interested in the details – and you haven't seen her since. Why didn't you tell me?'

There was no appeal that John could make which would crack the wall around Sherlock's emotions, it had been tested with hundreds of clients and none of them had managed to make him feel anything other than annoyance. He didn't reply, or change his expression for a single second.

But John drew a deep breath. 'You were ashamed.'

Mycroft's attention wavered, and he flashed John an assessing glance.

'You carried on coming here because you didn't want to admit to me what had happened. You thought I'd feel sorry for you. Well, you're right, I do. I know what this meant.'

Mycroft's face bore a hint of fascination now as he watched John. Sherlock just wished his friend would shut up.

John got up from his chair and walked to the nearest pile of books, picking one at random and flicking through the pages, stopping where the middle section had been torn out. 'You've been trying to find her.'

He swung around to look at the chaos littering the rest of the room. 'She's missing. That's why you're not really interested in anything else – this is the case you're working on. But you've failed. You don't know where she is.'

Mycroft stroked his chin. 'Very good, Doctor Watson. Perhaps I can assist. He will have started by identifying whoever rented this flat, tracing bank details, references, identity documents.'

Sherlock transferred his attention to his brother. Mycroft didn't know about the hours spent following false leads, visiting non-existent addresses in search of non-existent former landlords, calling utility companies about false names, tracing payments though financial systems until they disappeared. Mycroft didn't know the flat had been rented in the name of Yuri Gregarovitch, the Russian agent he'd pretended to be in Karachi, didn't understand that this was some kind of message meant to taunt him.

'And when these efforts were unsuccessful he will have turned his attention to the contents of the flat, it's possible that some of these items were purchased by whoever was living here. These books are remaindered stock from a library, are they not?'

Mycroft could have no clue of the days spent thumbing through auction catalogues, speaking to likely buyers, hunting though charity shops to find matching clothes labels, comparing cutlery to catalogues, pictures to printers.

'Failing in that, he will have widened his search to neighbours, shops in the vicinity, hairdressers, doctors.'

The months showing photographs to every single resident in a two-mile radius, every single bar and restaurant, every butchers, bakers and scented candle makers. And all of it for nothing.

'And then he will have searched for patterns. Unidentified fingerprints that didn't belong, unusual disappearances, mysterious women.'

'Ghosts,' said John. 'He's been chasing ghosts.' He slumped back in the chair. 'You didn't have to do this on your own. No wonder you couldn't cope. You're in love with someone who doesn't love you back.' He nodded, turned to Mycroft. 'Alright, I understand the drugs. Your turn.'

'I see why you treat him as part of the family,' said Mycroft. 'Who else would give you such brutal honesty? Now tell me what happened in Karachi, and leave out anything involving you, Irene Adler and a hotel room. I've heard quite enough about your sex life for one day.'

But Sherlock didn't need to refuse to answer because Mycroft's phone buzzed in his pocket and he read the text message then glanced up, frowning. 'Ignore that. The Russians have the treaty. I'm going to need every single detail you can remember.'

The Car Crash Bride by Sally Anne Palmer is now out on Amazon - if you'd like to review it for me I'l send you a copy for free.


	21. Chapter 21

Surprised, Sherlock groped in the inside pocket of his coat. 'I have it right here.' But his fingers came back empty.

Mycroft's expression, expectant for an instant, reformed itself into anger. 'For goodness sake, Sherlock. Again? Don't you ever think, or are you too busy making gooey eyes at her to ask about her motivations?'

Sherlock felt his forehead crease as he tried to follow Mycroft's reasoning. He could easily have lost the USB stick while walking along the street, or dropped it coming up the stairs, there wasn't an automatic connection to Irene as Mycroft was suggesting – or if there was he'd missed it.

His brother rose from the chair, paced the carpet in front of the fire, pausing to kick library books out of the way with unwonted violence.

'I will tell you what really happened in Karachi, shall I, and this was after you'd finished riding to the rescue on your white charger. It came to my attention that a British national had been beheaded, although the photographic evidence provided by the terrorists was quite convincing, there was no video to back it up. I investigated. I found the flight records of Yuri Gregarovitch, a prominent Russian assassin, who flew out of Karachi airport only a few hours after Miss Adler's purported death. I interrogated the terror cell, who readily volunteered that fact that she had been rescued by a man speaking Russian. I located the storage container hired in a Russian name. I tested the blood, the handcuffs, the hair samples, the clothing on the deck rail and concluded that Miss Adler was probably dead, and if not dead, then captured by our erstwhile allies.

And what do you think I did then, little brother? What do you think I did? I may not be able to read every scintilla of emotion that flies through your vapid head like Doctor Watson here, but to my extreme disappointment, we are still related. I extracted vengeance. She was one of ours, after all, but I confess I wasn't really doing it for her. I put pressure on my Russian counterparts to bring Yuri Gregarovitch to justice. When they wouldn't, I imposed sanctions – oh, I persuaded the UN to do it for a different reason but the murder of Miss Adler was my main motivation.

In the end Gregarovitch's body was found floating face down in a river in Moscow. They were forced to eliminate one of their best agents because of a deception that you put together and that I mistakenly believed. They've been looking for a way to get revenge on me ever since.'

He wheeled around. 'Doctor Watson. Are you familiar with the concept of a honey trap?'

John nodded, 'It's where someone is paid to put someone else in a compromising position.'

'Exactly. It's where a woman convinces a man to have sex with her to either blackmail him or in this case, to get him to do what she wants. My brother already has a history of taking this kind of bait.'

Sherlock was stung into a response, glaring across the room. 'That's not what happened. This was different.'

'Sherlock,' replied Mycroft silkily. 'Where is your phone?'

Sherlock removed it from his coat pocket, tapped it back to life. 'She didn't take it, I would have noticed. And anyway, this can't be related to your missing treaty, she sent me the key to the puzzle box two and a half years ago, whereas you only lost it in the last two months.'

The mobile was snatched from his hand.

'You make the mistake, once again, of thinking that the whole world revolves around you.' Mycroft drew out his own phone. 'Ah, here we are, right on cue.'

He tapped the screen once, and Irene's voice came rushing out of the tiny speakers, scratchy and coarse. 'I want your attention,' she said. 'While you are here I want your conversation, I want your trust and I want you to be honest with me. But most of all, I want to watch you when ...'

'Turn it off,' Sherlock yelled, drowning out the rest of the sentence.

He barrelled off the settee, attempted to snatch the offending device out of his brother's hand, and stop the betrayal being played out on it.

'I'm afraid not.' Mycroft regarded him with something approaching sympathy, which sent a wave of sickness burning through his guts. 'I need to see what sort of trouble I'm in.'

John spoke, covering the next few lines of dialogue. 'That's her, I know that voice. Who's she talking to? Let me see the screen, Mycroft.'

A series of very distinctive noses filled the room as John wrestled for control of the mobile. Unzipping noises. Sucking noises. Sherlock walked out.

The pain that shot through him was almost as strong as the emotion that had led him to her flat in the first place. He'd thought his heart was unassailable, but this hurt was like someone had prised it out of its box and was slicing it into pieces as he watched. He made it to the bottom of the stairs, attempted to leave the flat in search of something, anything, he wasn't quite sure what, but the booted thugs with whom his brother had arrived were blockading the alley and he couldn't get out.

Back upstairs the very private, very personal sounds he'd made while in her arms boomed around the flat. Mycroft had turned up the volume.

Sherlock shucked off his coat and jacket, rolled up his sleeves and sought the sanctuary of his study. Over the last six months he'd constructed an intricate distillery to purify and refine his most preferred methods of escape with into an easily injectable form. Someone had already taken the latest batch of finished products though; the room still glittered its crystal promise but it could no longer provide him with the oblivion he needed.

Slowly he picked up a glass beaker, hefted it a few times, then threw it at the wall. The next phial followed, and the next, and the next until the floor sparkled and everything was smashed.

He was still sitting amidst the ruins when John pushed the door open a few minutes later, surveyed the room carefully, then crouched on the floor in the next space along.

'Irene recorded the whole night,' he said, and Sherlock could hear the effort his friend was making to remain calm. 'In the first bit of video the light is on, to confirm the fact that it's definitely you, I would think. Then she turns the light off and opens the curtains and you fall asleep. She goes through your clothes, takes out your phone and leaves the room with it. Then she comes back in, walks over to the camera and switches it off. It was a set-up, she knew what she was doing. I'm so sorry.'

From the living room, Sherlock could hear his own voice. 'I love you,' he said, then there was a blur of noise as Mycroft spooled the recording back. 'I love you. I love you.'

He raised a hand and let it fall. 'He's right. In the morning, I couldn't find my phone and then in the alley outside I was barged by a man. I expect he was putting the phone back in my pocket, complete with whatever tracking software they'd installed. Today, I texted Mycroft to say I'd found the treaty and then, on the way here I was pickpocketed again, the same man again I think, although I wasn't paying much attention. They've been incepting my messages, they knew exactly where I was.'

He shook his head, resigned. 'She didn't want me, she just wanted my phone. This is revenge.'

'But you saved her life, didn't you?'

'I was the one who put it danger in the first place. She's never forgotten that. Or forgiven it.'

In the living room Mycroft's mobile was ringing, and fell silent as his brother held a muttered conversation. After a short while, Mycroft's shoes tapped down the corridor and he pushed open the study door.

'The video has been sent to senior members of the Cabinet and the security services along with a message thanking you for your help in passing secret information to the Kremlin. Our government is demanding decisive action from me, since I am responsible for the security breach. I have had to accede to their demands. If it helps you at all brother, this isn't personal, it's me that Moscow is interested in removing, you are simply collateral damage. I'm afraid that this time, I really am going to have to send you away.'

'More suicide missions, Mycroft?' John queried. 'Don't you have any better ideas?'

'Actually, the solution this time is rather more final.' Mycroft sighed. 'And suggested by my cold war counterparts. They want you locked up.'

He nodded in confirmation of Sherlock's unspoken question. 'It will cut down on my travel expenses having two siblings in there, at least.'

There was a noise from Mycroft's pocket, the throaty cry of a person reaching physical climax, although where once the text alert had been Irene's voice, now the exhalation was Sherlock's own. With a grimace, Mycroft retrieved it, read the message. 'Goodbye, Mr Holmes.'

If you are enjoying this story please read The Car Crash Bride by Sally Anne Palmer out now on Amazon.


	22. Chapter 22

Eventually, he went home, after a day spent flicking cigarette ends into the Thames. He unlocked the front door with a jerk, slammed it behind him and made his way upstairs. Mycroft would arrive in the morning, to whisk him away to an incarceration of unknown length, and all because he had supposed himself in love.

At the top of the stairs he stopped, sensing something amiss and pushed open the door to the living room cautiously.

Irene was sitting in his chair. She had resumed her professional disguise - high heels, tight skirt and a sheer blouse that he could see straight through. He averted his eyes, felt the sudden onslaught of anger, the bite of fingernails into his palms as he attempted to control it.

'Get out.' His voice came out higher than normal, and with a wobble at the end.

Her eyes roved over his body, lingering slightly too long on his lips, his chest, his crotch.

He suppressed the desire to hide behind something, battling a flood of images in which she was kneeling at his feet, spread-eagled beneath him calling his name and on top of him, head thrown back in ecstasy.

She made no sound, raised a single eyebrow.

He took a deep, steadying breath, pointed at the glamourous, polished, furious looking woman determinedly not sitting in the consulting chair. 'You have five minutes,' he said. 'Go.' He checked his watch.

She uncrossed her legs, wrapped them around each other again more slowly and bent forward, resting her chin on her fist. Her eyes were steel and anger. 'I've had you in my mouth, Sherlock,' she said. 'I'm not a client.'

A wave of revulsion crashed through him. 'No, but I am, aren't I? I'm just someone you've been paid to have sex with. I'd better sit in the chair.' He fumbled for the back of it, sat down with a clatter.

'Roleplay, darling? You should have told me that turned you on. How about I pretend to be the wronged woman and you pretend to be the lying detective?' She extended a slim and shapely arm, and uncurled bright red fingernails to reveal a somewhat battered memory stick.

He frowned, squinted at what she was holding, shook his head.

The crack of her voice across the room startled him. 'You have exactly five minutes to explain yourself before I walk out of here and you never see me again. Go.'

It took him a while to work it out, nine seconds at least - but then, his mind had never operated particularly coherently when she was around. He took a breath. 'Six months ago, the first time I came to your flat you told me the Russians had been after you because of what happened in Karachi, but that you'd managed to straighten out the misunderstanding. What you meant was, you'd agreed to work for them. You'd agreed to entrap me into sleeping with you so that you could take my phone and use it to work out when I'd found some secret information for Mycroft. That information was then stolen from me and a sex tape you'd recorded without my consent was circulated to incriminate and discredit me and weaken my brother.'

'I've had relationships with lots of people in my life, personal and professional. Men and women. Have a guess how many of them I've let do exactly what they wanted to me? Have a guess how many of them I've ever trusted. You have four minutes remaining.'

He continued because he simply couldn't stop himself. 'Or that was what it was supposed to look like. The information on that memory stick was in the possession of a woman named Hope Trelawney two months ago, after she'd stolen it from her Foreign Secretary lover. She was murdered for the data and the body was very effectively concealed, along with her real identity, by a complex and organised hostile agency at work in London, who made Miss Trelawney disappear at short notice. But the treaty wasn't where it was supposed to be. Just before she died Miss Trelawney had hidden the stolen memory stick in a compartment under the rug in her flat from where it was recovered by her cleaner, who had moved the rug in the course of her weekly visit. Julia Stoner was Hope Trelawney's cleaner and, with an eye for a profit she took the USB stick home. You, I assume, then worked out who had found the data and bought Julia's information from her, as she came into enough money to give up her job and plan a big wedding. But she wasn't careful enough, because, to cover their tracks, the agency involved poisoned Julia Stoner. Not you, because if you'd wanted her dead you wouldn't have bothered paying her off – rather, someone you report to but have no control over had her killed. It was easily done, a fellow diner in the café just slipped an extra doughnut onto her plate when she wasn't looking. The diner was an impoverished drug dealer called Brandon something.'

'Collins,' she snapped. 'You were too busy wallowing in self pity to pay attention. I asked you for one thing - I asked you to trust me and you couldn't even manage that. Three minutes.'

The words were unstoppable, his brain making connections and sending the conclusions directly to his mouth. 'Brandon Collins, who was heavily in debt to his mother and would have done anything for ready cash. When Brandon realised that the woman he'd given the pastry to had died he went back to his handler and asked for more money, threatening to go to the press, leading to his own assassination. The USB stick was returned to its hiding place under the rug in Hope Trelawney's apartment by a woman pretending to be a cleaner, from where I recovered it. Even John noticed it was too easy. Julia Stoner had been dead for weeks by this point, so you will have had to replace the memory stick yourself. Your Russian backers wanted the data, but they wanted to get it from me, in order to compromise Mycroft – they didn't want you to give it to them directly. And while you needed their protection to be able to move freely around London and re-establish yourself, as you clearly have, you had no intention of letting them have the real information.'

'You've been using again. You put your own life in danger and mine along with it. Your behaviour has been inexcusable. Two minutes.'

'You switched the memory sticks. The Russians don't have the right data, but they think they do. My guess is you've inserted a few glaring errors into it, and you're using a friend of yours who runs a company called The Violet Hunter to expose those errors all over social media right now. Even though most of the information is accurate no one will take it seriously because it looks like fake news. Its value as propaganda has been lost, the information is already discredited. But you have a powerful foreign ally. And you've been in touch with Mycroft by now as well.'

'Do you realise it took you less than a day to decide you didn't trust me? Less than a day between 'I love you' and ' _find me, before I find you'_. One minute.'

'You've told my brother you're willing to act as a double agent, sharing information with both sides. He knows his missing information is safe and he knows he has you to thank. If you were feeling kind you've told him you and I were working together, and that the whole incident with the video was a cover story to get the Kremlin to believe they'd outwitted British intelligence. You have two powerful allies – you don't need to run any more. You don't need a camera phone and incriminating pictures, you're free. As long as you can keep both sides happy.'

'I told you I was in trouble after Karachi, but I didn't want you to try to rescue me again. I sent you all those clients so you could work out what was going on. All you needed to do was play along and find that treaty. But you made everything so much harder. You spent your time trying to find me, tearing yourself to pieces over it, when I needed you to do the one thing you're famous for – think.'

He shrugged. 'I can't think around you. Or rather, I can't think of anything but you.'

'I wasn't trying to hurt you, I tried to protect you. I didn't want you to say anything on that video that you might come to regret. I kept telling you to stop.'

He allowed himself a small smile, watched her rise stiffly, straight backed and severe and the stopwatch in his head told him his five minutes was up. 'I don't regret saying it. I do regret the fact that you sent the video to my brother. I think he might have plans to use it as a ringtone.'

She lifted the corners of her mouth, but there was no humour in it. 'Didn't you watch the tape? It was carefully edited. Lots of shots of your face and nothing from the waist down.' She drew level with him now, held out the memory stick for him to take. 'Of course, I've kept the unedited version for my own consumption.'

He ignored her hand, pressed his fingers to her wrist instead. 'And what would you have said, if we hadn't been on tape? Would you have answered me properly when I told you that I love you?'

He felt no shame in saying it again. Love was a dangerous weakness, but worse still was trying to live without it, as he'd learned over the last six months. The pounding of the blood through her veins convinced him that this deduction at least, was right.

She grimaced. 'I'm afraid happily ever after isn't really my thing.'

But her eyes were damp. Moist. Wet even. He smiled at her, took a step closer. The memory stick dropped to the floor. He slid his fingers up her wrist, over the ball of her thumb, curling into her palm and then wrapped her hand in his. Another tiny pace forward brought him near enough to feel the heat of her body, smell her perfume, read the hesitation in her eyes.

'That's a shame,' he murmured. 'Because I rather think it might be mine.'

She put her other hand on his chest, but there was no strength behind it and she didn't move away. 'You can't keep love in a box, Sherlock,' she said. 'It isn't the same as sex, and believe me, I know the difference. Love is about attention and conversation, honesty and trust. Above all, trust. You don't trust me.'

He raised his free hand, ran his fingertips across her cheek, stepped close enough that the world began to fade around her and his attention focused in on her eyes, her lips. 'I woke up in the morning and you weren't there; I jumped to the wrong conclusion. If it's any consolation, that almost never happens.' His voice dropped to a whisper. 'The only solution is for you to always be there when I wake up.'

'I have no intention of moving in.'

'I'll find you a key.' He bent to kiss her, and he was nearly sure she wasn't going to back away.

March

 _Simply, quietly, he said. 'I love you.'_

 _He felt the sudden tension thrum through her muscles and she paused for an instant, before shifting in his arms, turning to face him. Her lips pressed soft against his ear, whispering a message that was more lullaby than response, a tiny thread of sound in the quiet, so soft he might have misheard._

 _'I know. But if you really love me, you have to trust me, just for a while. Promise?'_

 _He smiled a sleepy smile. 'Always.'_

 _I have written two romance novels: The Car Crash Bride and The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer which are available in electronic and print versions. If you like this story, there is more of the same in my books._


	23. Chapter 23

'Poker – how about a poker night? You, me, beer, a takeaway curry and a lot of money changing hands.'

'I would win.' Sherlock turned up the collar of his coat against the October chill.

'Bridge then, you need partners for bridge, it's an old woman's game. You have Mrs Hudson, I'll take Mycroft.'

'Mycroft would win, and he'd be extraordinarily smug about it, you have no idea.'

'Happy families then – no one objects to a game of happy families.'

'I don't see why we need a 'boy's night out' anyway. She's stayed over exactly three times, I don't see how that changes anything at all.'

John shook his head, 'It's only a matter of time, mate. When are you seeing her again?'

Sherlock unlocked the front door and replied, with an air of patience running thin. 'You don't need to keep asking me that either, I've written it on the calendar, look for yourself.'

The swing of the door brought with it a roil of black smoke and the odour of burning.

John raced upstairs. 'You left the bloody iron on again. Mrs Hudson's going to go mental.'

A woman's voice called from the kitchen and John pulled up short, coughing at the terrible smell. 'You're supposed to say 'hi honey I'm home'.'

Sherlock fished a handkerchief out of his pocket, handed it over and John covered his nose and mouth gratefully. 'Why?' he called back, more curious than annoyed.

'Because that's what ordinary people do.'

'I'm not ordinary people.'

'Say it anyway.' Irene appeared from the direction of the kitchen, although with the density of the smoke, it was hard to tell. She was dressed in a frilly pinafore, tied tight over the top of a high necked, long sleeved flowery dress, also with frills and there were rollers in her hair and slippers on her feet.

John gave Sherlock a broad grin, which he ignored.

She was wielding a wooden spoon as if it was an instrument of torture, and given her apparent culinary ability, Sherlock thought that assessment might be correct. He shrugged, gave in. 'Hi honey, I'm home?'

She approached him with a swagger in her hips and a suggestive tilt to her head that usually meant only one thing and offered her cheek. 'Hello, dear. Good day at work?'

He failed to deliver the expected kiss and she pouted, then swayed closer, pressed herself tight against him and pecked a chaste kiss on his mouth. He splayed his hand over her lower back, confirming what the line of her dress had told him – suspender belt and no knickers. He cast half a glance at John – this might prove to be a difficult evening.

She dropped back off her tiptoes, read something in his eyes, and then stretched up again for a decidedly unchaste kiss. He kissed her back briefly, drawing her lower lip into his mouth in the way she'd demonstrated in last night's lesson, and her fingers entwined themselves in the hair at the nape of his neck as she settled in for the long haul. He took hold of her upper arms, moved her firmly one step away.

She frowned at him, pivoted smoothly and favoured John with a welcoming smile. 'Oh hello, Doctor Watson, I didn't notice you there. Would you like to stay for dinner?'

Behind her back Sherlock made a slashing motion with his hand, shook his head, but John had gone into full on smirk mode and said loudly. 'I'd love to. I wouldn't miss this for anything.'

Sherlock sighed, feeling distinctly like he was being ganged up on, and went to open all the windows, throwing his coat on a convenient chair. This wasn't one of the days on the calendar, and given the scheduling nightmare that was her client diary he wasn't really sure why she was in his flat at all, but he was pleased she'd dropped by. He examined the feeling again, pulled it out, looked at it from all sides – yes, he was pleased. Despite the smoke and the awkwardness of John staying to dinner, and whatever she meant by the costume. Pleased.

He smiled to himself, wandered back into the kitchen to find John setting the table for three, also smiling. The only one not smiling was Irene, whose face bore a look of serious concentration as she carried a very large and heavy cast iron pan to the middle of the dining table and prodded whatever horrors lay inside it with her spoon. He took a seat opposite her, then scraped the chair back so there was no way she could reach him underneath it, as John sat at the head of the table, pouring cheap wine out of a screw top bottle.

'To what do I owe this pleasure?' Sherlock asked, sniffing the wine and deciding not to taste it.

'Cancellation. Don't worry, I'll make sure he's very sorry.'

She ladled a bowlful of foul smelling slop out of the pan and dolloped it on his plate, adding more until it was spilling off the edge. Then she did the same for herself and John, although they only had a single mouthful to contend with, by the look of it.

'And how was your day?' She gazed at him brightly, innocently, and he wondered what game she was playing this time, before realising that he didn't really care.

Despite the history, the two of them had still never actually managed to go out for dinner, since on the infrequent occasions he saw her Irene usually just wanted to drag him straight to bed and sort out the talking part later. He poked at the mess on his plate with a fork, wondering if he was meant to eat it or build it into something.

John cut in. 'The adventure of the red headed league - that's what I'm going to call it. This morning a man came to see us with an unusual case. He'd answered an ad in the Evening Standard for a clerical job only open to people with bright red hair. It was an easy job, he just had to sit in an office every afternoon and copy out the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the pay was immense. Anyway, he turned up to his job yesterday afternoon to find a note on the door saying that the red headed league, his employers, had gone out of business owing him several thousand pounds. I said they'd probably been sued for employment discrimination by everyone in London who didn't have red hair but your boyfriend here wanted to investigate.'

Sherlock shot John a dark glance, but John carried on regardless, seemingly able to smile and speak simultaneously.

'So, we went to his charity shop to see if there was anything unusual about it.'

'Not the charity shop right next to Moorgate Station in the middle of the City? You're talking about Jabez Wilson aren't you – I've been to his shop before.'

Sherlock cleared his throat and she flashed him a look immediately. There weren't many subjects which were off limits – in fact, over the last month or so he'd found himself having detailed conversations about topics which had previously been utterly alien. A simple enquiry about her day would elicit a comparison of the efficacy of various styles of vibrators, at which he had initially balked, before rationalising that a conversation about different types of cigarette ash was probably no more unusual. In fact, he'd stored away the vibrator conversation for future reference. But anything that reminded him of the six months he'd spent hating and mistrusting her wasn't something he ever wanted to remember.

'Don't tell me there's another plot to dig under his shop into the vault of the Bank of England? Someone comes up with that bright idea every six months. Who is it this time?'

John stopped smiling. 'Oh. You knew already. That took Sherlock the whole day to solve.'

Both of his dining companions turned their attention towards him. 'Did you work it out for yourself or is Douglas Ross another client?' He pushed his plate away. The subject of her clients and the amount of time she spent with them was beginning to rankle.

She answered patiently. 'No. But I've heard of him.'

'You know what he likes?' There was a bitter edge to his words that he wasn't very proud of.

'No. No idea. But my network of contacts is pretty good. I've been on the wrong side of the tracks for quite a long time now, next time you have a case why don't you ask me about it first?'

'Yes, Sherlock.' John repeated. 'Why don't you ask her about it first?'

John was plainly about to mention his poker night theory.

Sherlock bristled. 'I have a network of contacts too. '

'Your homeless network,' she said. 'I've never really understood that. I mean, I get that they're cheap, they'll get drunk outside any building you like if you pay them in vodka, but they're not exactly reliable, are they? Or inconspicuous. Everyone notices homeless people; otherwise how could you pretend to ignore them? Wouldn't it be easier just to get out and talk to people?'

'Yes, Sherlock,' John repeated. 'Wouldn't it be easier if you just got out and talked to people? Nicely.'

Sherlock sat back, folded his arms. 'And how was your day, dear?'

She smiled. 'Lovely. Dear. I met a Chinese businessman with a penchant for very young girls who's about to broker a massive trade deal with North Korea. What do you think?' She slid a look at John.

'I trust him,' Sherlock confirmed.

'Mycroft or the Russians – he could be useful to either side?'

'Tell the Russians.'

She sat back. 'You always say that. You never want me to tell Mycroft anything. I have to make it look like I'm working for him too.'

'Tell him about that load of illegally imported rotting herring your client mentioned last week. The one who wanted you to hit him round the face with a wet wellington boot.'

'I don't think you're taking my work as seriously as I'm expected to take yours,' she observed. 'Situation analysis, please.'

'Now?' He glanced at John.

'Yes, please. Right now.'

He surveyed the room quickly, making out more details now that the smoke had cleared. The kitchen looked much like a supermarket had exploded on it, the remains of various tins, packets and boxes scattered across the work surface amidst a slew of pots and pans. Food was ground into the floor, various squashed vegetables perched on shelves and the fridge door was hanging open, bulging with something that smelt much like off camembert.

'You've been cooking,' he began. 'You spent several hours devising a four course menu, judging by the list of ingredients under the magnet on the fridge, which you've then made two trips to the shops to procure.'

'Three,' she corrected.

He frowned. 'I hadn't counted the taxi ride you made to the delicatessen counter in Fortnum and Mason as a trip to the shop since you also had a facial and a manicure at the salon around the corner so that's pleasure, not business. You've been boiling something on the stove for…'

He took a moment to assess the length and density of the condensation stains all over the walls.

'Four hours. Your hair is still in curlers, and you've only managed to produce a single dish, so I've arrived home earlier than expected. You haven't had time to light the new candles still on the counter in the bag, or decant the wine, which you forgot to buy and had to run out to the local off licence for half an hour ago judging by the temperature, hoping that if you threw away the bottle I wouldn't notice the source. You've also made a special effort to put on a new, reasonably priced dress, which you don't want to get stains on, but which isn't costly enough that you need to remove it while preparing dinner. I'm not mentioning your preparations under the dress because we have a guest.'

'Factually correct,' she confirmed. 'And?'

'And I'm supposed to feel grateful.' Sherlock gazed down at his plate thoughtfully, reached out for his fork. 'I should be pleased that you've gone to so much trouble to create a romantic evening and I should feel a commensurate increase in sentiment because you've spent your thought, time and energy in considering how to anticipate and gratify my desires.'

He gestured at the food, which looked like someone had vomited and then burnt the results. 'I'm going to have to eat this, aren't I?'

She grinned. 'That would be the appropriate response, yes.'

He sighed, took a small bite. It tasted much like it looked. 'All of it?'

'You would if you really loved me.'

'Wait,' said John. 'I don't understand. Whose fantasy is this?'

Irene sounded outraged. 'This isn't my fantasy. Look at the state of this dress. I look like his mother. Nothing about this situation turns me on, I assure you.'

John pointed a finger. 'Then Sherlock, it must be yours.'

Sherlock swallowed, shot Irene a broad grin but didn't answer.

'What?' she sounded horrified. 'In this dress? Are you sure?'

'It isn't the dress on its own.' He took another mouthful, washed it down with wine and nearly choked. 'It's more the combination of the dress and its occupant.'

John put his cutlery together. 'And I think that's my cue to leave.'

'This isn't a fantasy,' she explained, reaching across to pat Sherlock's hand. 'At least, not the fantasy of any normal person. This is real life. We're just like ordinary people. He can demonstrate normal emotional responses if he really tries hard – we've been practising.'

John looked backwards and forwards as if he was watching an imaginary tennis game. 'You two are as odd as each other.'

'No. We're ordinary. It's just that he's also a crime fighting detective with a stupid hat and I'm a – what is it Doctor Watson calls me?'

Sherlock spoke through a mouthful. 'Lesbian dominatrix.'

'I'm a lesbian dominatrix. Do you know where he's hidden the hat by the way, he's refusing to wear it?'

'That really is my cue to leave.'

Sherlock sat back, pushed the plate of food away. 'Alright. I give up. I beg for mercy. Don't make me eat any more.'

She stood, triumphant, circled around to the opposite side of the table, hitched up her skirt and perched next to his plate. 'Say it again.'

He attempted a severe glare, gave up when he realised all his face would do currently was smile. He looked deep into her eyes. 'You heard,' he said. 'I'm begging for mercy. Twice.'

She laughed, pushed plates, cutlery, glasses, pans and everything else out of the way, yanked up her skirt still further and sat on the table directly in front of him, spreading her legs just a little.

Sherlock was dimly aware of John's rapidly repeating footsteps and his yell of 'See you on poker night,' before he bent forward.

Read my books The Postman's Daughter and The Car Crash Bride by Sally Anne Palmer available now on Amazon and Kobo.


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